Higher ground turns first, so the slopes above the road lead the valley by a few days.
Weather Wind to 45 mph Saturday. Color may come down before it turns.
45 reports came in from Coos County this week, 22 of them patchy color and 18 of them just starting. They moved our date 3 days later. See the county on the map.
Still greenStartingNearly peakPeakPast peakNo fall canopy we forecastInside the line, each band of elevation is painted on its own date.
Around Wild River Wilderness Nearly all of the wilderness is in Coos County, which is nearly peak today. That’s the county as a whole, which peaks 5 days earlier than the wilderness’s own stands: the wilderness is starting to turn.By elevation The wilderness runs from about 1,558 to 3,648 feet. That’s 7 days of season between the top and the bottom: the high stands peak around Sep 29, the low ground holds until about Oct 5, and the color comes downhill in between. The date at the top of this page is the 2,000 to 2,500 foot band.
3,500–4,000 ftNearly peakpeak Sep 297%
3,000–3,500 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 113%
2,500–3,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 226%
2,000–2,500 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 430%
1,500–2,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 520%
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.
See it now PhenoCam Network, Bartlett Experimental Forest camera, 13 km away, captured Sep 25.
That’s 1 day earlier than our model alone would say. This September has been running cool, which shifts peak color.
Set the days you can be here. Everything under them answers for those days, not for peak.
Saturday 3 October to Sunday 4 October
You’ll find it just past peak up high, peak color lower down.
Up at 3,000 feet the stands peak around Oct 1; down at 2,000 feet they hold on until about Oct 5. Pick your elevation for the day you come.
3,000–3,500 ftJust past peakpeak Oct 1
2,500–3,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 2
2,000–2,500 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 4
1,500–2,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 5
Where to drive
Kancamagus Highway, about 24 miles · Route 112 (Lost River Road), about 39 miles · Route 100, about 88 miles
What turns
sugar maple, red maple, paper birch, yellow birch, American beech
What turns, and when
sugar maple30%
red maple20%
paper birch20%
yellow birch10%
American beech10%
quaking aspen10%
Also named across New Hampshire, outside what the canopy read measures here: White Birch.
New Hampshire's White Mountains produce the most dramatic fall color in the Northeast, with sugar maples blazing orange and scarlet against the granite peaks and dark green of spruce.
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 27 long-running forest cameras: two dates in three land within 10 days of the camera’s own peak. How this map is made
