Peak color lands around Oct 19 in most of Rhode Island, but it moves 6 days across the state. Here’s where, and when, and how sure we are.
Rhode Island’s season, place by place
Every place we forecast in Rhode Island, each set on the calendar at its peak and painted by how far along it is today, Sep 25.
First: Sachuest Point National Wildlife Refuge, Oct 20. Last: Block Island National Wildlife Refuge, Oct 22.
The dashed rule is today; the solid one is the median of the places on this chart, Oct 21. The date at the top of the page is the median county, which includes the low ground between them.
The county map today
Where to go in Rhode Island
The destinations we cover in Rhode Island, in the order their color arrives. Each carries its own forecast and its own band, because a state isn’t one place.
- Sachuest Point National Wildlife RefugeToo earlyPeak 20 Oct best 19 to 22 Oct
- Ninigret National Wildlife RefugeToo earlyPeak 21 Oct best 20 to 23 Oct
- Trustom Pond National Wildlife RefugeToo earlyPeak 21 Oct best 20 to 23 Oct
- John H. Chafee National Wildlife RefugeToo earlyPeak 21 Oct best 20 to 23 Oct
- Block Island National Wildlife RefugeToo earlyPeak 22 Oct best 21 to 24 Oct
When to go
Across 5 counties, peak color is forecast to arrive first in Providence County around Oct 15 and last in Bristol County around Oct 21. Most of the state peaks near Oct 19.
Each date is the middle of the four days we’d aim a trip at, and each place page names them. We score the model against 27 long-running forest monitoring sites in this part of the country and publish what it got wrong.
This autumn is running 1 day early in Rhode Island. September has run cooler than the 1991 to 2020 normal so far, and the dates above already include that. It’s a real signal but a modest one: temperature explains under a tenth of how much peak color moves year to year.
Mid-to-late October, with the coast lagging into early November is how Rhode Island is usually described.
What actually turns
Rhode Island's fall color is concentrated in the rural western hills, where red maples turn scarlet in the swamp edges and oaks color the ridges in burgundy and rust.
- Red Maple
- Red Oak
- White Oak
- Hickory
- American Beech
Arcadia Management Area in the western part of the state is the largest wild area in Rhode Island and produces the best concentrated fall color.
Every county, by peak week
The ocean does a lot of the work here. The coast itself turns 4 days after the woods inland at the same latitude, and the counties along it run a few days behind, because water that soaked up a summer of heat gives it back all fall and holds the first hard frosts off.
Kent, Newport, Providence regional, Washington
Bristol
Every date on this site is a forecast: a model corrected by ground reports, carrying a measured error, published in full. Check conditions with the land manager before you travel. Last reviewed September 2026. Open the live map