Peak color, most of the stand13 OctAim for 12 to 15 Oct
In the wilderness today, Sep 25Starting to turn
bigleaf maple and vine maple
black cottonwood, peak Sep 22
Peak color should arrive around 22 Sep for the black cottonwood, and around 15 Oct for the bigleaf maple and vine maple.
Roadsides and wetland edges turn first, and the woods behind them run a few days later.
Weather Wind to 45 mph Friday. 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 Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness Multnomah County holds most of the wilderness and is starting to turn today. Hood River County, to the southeast, is 2 days ahead.By elevation The wilderness runs from about 82 to 4,045 feet. That’s 5 days of season between the top and the bottom: the high stands peak around Oct 7, 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 0 to 1,000 foot band.
4,000–5,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 76%
3,000–4,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 1230%
2,000–3,000 ftStill greenpeak Oct 1729%
1,000–2,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 915%
0–1,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 1221%
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.
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.
3,000–4,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 12
2,000–3,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 17
1,000–2,000 ftJust past peakpeak Oct 9
0–1,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 12
Where to drive
Historic Columbia River Highway, about 11 miles · McKenzie Pass Scenic Byway (Route 242), about 93 miles
What turns
bigleaf maple, vine maple, Oregon white oak, black cottonwood, red alder
What turns, and when
bigleaf maple31%
vine maple22%
Oregon white oak22%
black cottonwood13%
red alder12%
Also named across Oregon, outside what the canopy read measures here: Western Larch.
Vine maples turn vivid scarlet in the understory of Douglas fir forests, bigleaf maples go gold with enormous leaves, and the Columbia Gorge frames it all against waterfalls and basalt.
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
