Higher ground turns first, so the slopes above the road lead the valley by a few days.
Weather Wind to 40 mph Friday. Color may come down before it turns.
Weather Hard frost Saturday night. Peak may come early and go fast.
No new reports from the ground here this week.
Still greenStartingNearly peakPeakPast peakNo fall canopy we forecastInside the line, each band of elevation is painted on its own date.
Around Hemingway-Boulders Wilderness Custer County holds most of the wilderness and is peak color today. That’s the county as a whole, which peaks 3 days later than the wilderness’s own stands: the wilderness is just past peak. Blaine County, to the southeast, is 5 days behind.By elevation The wilderness runs from about 6,649 to 10,450 feet. That’s 25 days of season between the top and the bottom: the high stands peak around Sep 1, the low ground holds until about Sep 26, and the color comes downhill in between. The date at the top of this page is the 7,000 to 8,000 foot band.
10,000–11,000 ftLeaves downpeak Sep 114%
9,000–10,000 ftFadingpeak Sep 730%
8,000–9,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 1425%
7,000–8,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 2020%
6,000–7,000 ftPeak colorpeak Sep 2611%
SepOctNov
Height off 3DEP inside the wilderness’s own boundary; each band carries the date our model gives that elevation, corrections and all. The percentage is how much of the wilderness stands in it.
Also named across Idaho, outside what the canopy read measures here: Black Cottonwood, Western Larch, Water Birch.
Aspens turn gold on the mountainsides, cottonwoods line the river corridors in yellow, and western larches in the northern panhandle go deep amber before dropping their needles.
This forecast is built from the species that stand here, their elevation and this September’s weather, and corrected in season by cameras, foresters and our own crew. Out here we score it against NASA's satellite record of when the canopy shuts down, read inside each unit’s own boundary: two dates in three land within 12 days of it. How this map is made
