Higher ground turns first, so the slopes above the road lead the valley by a few days.
Weather Wind to 35 mph Saturday. Color may come down before it turns.
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 Sawtooth National Forest Cassia County holds most of the forest and is peak color today. That’s the county as a whole, which peaks 8 days earlier than the forest’s own stands: the forest is starting to turn. Custer County, to the north, is 2 days ahead. Blaine County, to the north, is 3 days behind.By elevation The forest runs from about 4,597 to 9,110 feet. That’s 32 days of season between the top and the bottom: the high stands peak around Sep 10, the low ground holds until about Oct 12, and the color comes downhill in between. The date at the top of this page is the 5,000 to 6,000 foot band.
9,000–10,000 ftFadingpeak Sep 106%
8,000–9,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 1624%
7,000–8,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 2225%
6,000–7,000 ftNearly peakpeak Sep 2922%
5,000–6,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 516%
4,000–5,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 128%
SepOctNov
Height off 3DEP inside the forest’s own boundary; each band carries the date our model gives that elevation, corrections and all. The percentage is how much of the forest 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
