Higher ground turns first, so the slopes above the road lead the valley by a few days.
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 Henry M. Jackson Wilderness Snohomish County holds most of the wilderness and is starting to turn today. Chelan County, to the east, is 3 days behind. King County, to the southwest, is 2 days ahead.By elevation The wilderness runs from about 2,351 to 5,590 feet. That’s 15 days of season between the top and the bottom: the high stands peak around Sep 21, the low ground holds until about Oct 8, and the color comes downhill in between. The date at the top of this page is the 3,000 to 4,000 foot band.
5,000–6,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 2117%
4,000–5,000 ftNearly peakpeak Sep 2742%
3,000–4,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 326%
2,000–3,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 89%
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.
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.
Sunday 4 October to Monday 5 October
You’ll find it fading up high, nearly peak lower down.
Up at 5,000 feet the stands peak around Sep 21; down at 3,000 feet they hold on until about Oct 8. Pick your elevation for the day you come.
5,000–6,000 ftFadingpeak Sep 21
4,000–5,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 27
3,000–4,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 3
2,000–3,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 8
Where to drive
Mountain Loop Highway, about 19 miles · Sherman Pass Scenic Byway (Route 20), about 136 miles
What turns
bigleaf maple, black cottonwood, vine maple, red alder, willow
What turns, and when
bigleaf maple25%
black cottonwood23%
vine maple19%
red alder16%
willow13%
red-osier dogwood3%
Also named across Washington, outside what the canopy read measures here: Western Larch.
Vine maples turn scarlet in the Cascade understory, bigleaf maples go gold in the lowlands, and the western larches in the Okanogan and Wenatchee forests turn amber on the high slopes.
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
