Peak color, most of the stand20 OctAim for 19 to 22 Oct
In the park today, Sep 25Still green
sugar maple and American beech
white oak and northern red oak, peak Oct 26
Peak color should arrive around 18 Oct for the sugar maple and American beech, and around 26 Oct for the white oak and northern red oak.
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 forecastInside the line, each band of elevation is painted on its own date.
Around Cuyahoga Valley National Park Summit County holds most of the park and is still green today. Cuyahoga County, to the north, is 2 days behind.By elevation The park runs from about 657 to 1,037 feet. It turns together: there isn’t enough relief here for the color to come down in stages.
1,000–2,000 ftStill greenpeak Oct 1913%
0–1,000 ftStill greenpeak Oct 2087%
SepOctNov
Height off 3DEP inside the park’s own boundary; each band carries the date our model gives that elevation, corrections and all. The percentage is how much of the park stands in it.
That’s 3 days later than our model alone would say. This September has been running warm, which shifts peak color.
The place
The Cuyahoga River caught fire in 1969, and that image became the symbol of everything wrong with American industry. Now 22 miles of that same river run through a national park between Cleveland and Akron. The forest came back. The herons came back. The whole valley is a 33,000-acre argument that we can actually fix what we broke, if we bother to try.
Established 2000. About 2.9 million/year visitors.
Set the days you can be here. Everything under them answers for those days, not for peak.
Monday 19 October to Tuesday 20 October
You’ll find it peak color.
That's the day our forecast puts peak color here.
1,000–2,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 19
0–1,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 20
Where to drive
Hocking Hills Scenic Byway (Route 374), about 136 miles · Route 6 through Allegheny National Forest, about 140 miles
What turns
sugar maple, American beech, red maple, northern red oak, white oak
Entrance
No entrance fee
What turns, and when
sugar maple30%
American beech20%
red maple17%
northern red oak13%
white oak13%
shagbark hickory7%
Hocking Hills' sandstone gorges frame sugar maples in vivid orange, red oaks turn deep burgundy across the unglaciated Appalachian Plateau, and beeches fade to bronze in the ravines.
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
