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.
That’s 2 days later than our model alone would say. This September has been running warm, which shifts peak color.
Plan this tripIf you can only come on certain days
Set the days you can be here. Everything under them answers for those days, not for peak.
Monday 12 October to Tuesday 13 October
You’ll find it peak color.
That's the day our forecast puts peak color here.
- Where to drive
- Brockway Mountain Drive, about 89 miles · Route 41 through Copper Country, about 93 miles · Tunnel of Trees (M-119), about 102 miles
- What turns
- sugar maple, red maple, paper birch, quaking aspen, yellow birch
What turns, and when
- sugar maple29%
- red maple21%
- paper birch20%
- quaking aspen10%
- yellow birch10%
- American beech10%
Also named across Michigan, outside what the canopy read measures here: Red Oak.
Michigan produces some of the most vivid sugar maple color in America, with the Upper Peninsula's maples turning neon orange and scarlet against birch gold and the dark green of hemlocks.
Across Michigan as a whole: Early October in the inland UP, mid-October on the Lake Superior shore and in the northern Lower Peninsula, late October in the south.
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 13 long-running forest cameras: two dates in three land within 9 days of the camera’s own peak. How this map is made