Roadsides and wetland edges turn first, and the woods behind them run a few days later.
No new reports from the ground here this week.
Still greenStartingNearly peakPeakPast peakNo fall canopy we forecast
Around Mammoth Cave National Park Edmonson County holds most of the park and is still green today. Hart County, to the northeast, is 1 day ahead.
That’s 5 days later than our model alone would say. This September has been running warm, which shifts peak color.
The place
Over 420 miles of surveyed passages and still growing. Mammoth Cave is the longest known cave system on earth by a factor of two, and every expedition pushes that number further. Humans have been walking these passages for at least 5,000 years. The park above ground covers 54,000 acres of Kentucky hardwood forest that most visitors never bother to see.
Set the days you can be here. Everything under them answers for those days, not for peak.
Saturday 31 October to Sunday 1 November
You’ll find it peak color.
That's the day our forecast puts peak color here.
Where to drive
Route 46 through Brown County, about 139 miles
What turns
white oak, northern red oak, red maple, shagbark hickory, sweetgum
Entrance
No entrance fee
What turns, and when
white oak31%
northern red oak23%
red maple19%
shagbark hickory12%
sweetgum4%
blackgum4%
Also named across Kentucky, outside what the canopy read measures here: Sugar Maple, Tulip Poplar.
The Cumberland Plateau and Daniel Boone National Forest produce a warm palette of gold tulip poplars, bronze hickories, and deep red sugar maples against sandstone cliffs.
Across Kentucky as a whole: Mid-October in the eastern mountains, late October to early November in the Bluegrass.
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. We score it here against 7 long-running forest cameras: two dates in three land within 13 days of the camera’s own peak. How this map is made
