Peak color, most of the stand7 OctAim for 6 to 9 Oct
In the forest today, Sep 25Starting to turn
black cottonwood and willow
vine maple, peak Oct 21
Peak color should arrive around 5 Oct for the black cottonwood and willow, and around 21 Oct for the vine maple.
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 Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest King County holds most of the forest and is nearly peak today. That’s the county as a whole, which peaks 5 days earlier than the forest’s own stands: the forest is starting to turn. Skagit County, to the north, is 1 day behind. Snohomish County, to the north, is 2 days behind.By elevation The forest runs from about 598 to 5,712 feet. That’s 21 days of season between the top and the bottom: the high stands peak around Sep 21, 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 3,000 foot band.
5,000–6,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 2115%
4,000–5,000 ftNearly peakpeak Sep 2726%
3,000–4,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 325%
2,000–3,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 717%
1,000–2,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 28%
0–1,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 57%
SepOctNov
Height off 3DEP inside the forest’s own boundary; each band carries the date our model gives that elevation, corrections and all. The percentage is how much of the forest 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.
Tuesday 6 October to Wednesday 7 October
You’ll find it fading up high, peak color lower down.
Up at 5,000 feet the stands peak around Sep 21; down at 3,000 feet they hold on until about Oct 7. 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 ftJust past peakpeak Oct 3
2,000–3,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 7
Where to drive
Mountain Loop Highway, about 18 miles · Sherman Pass Scenic Byway (Route 20), about 146 miles
What turns
black cottonwood, willow, bigleaf maple, red alder, vine maple
What turns, and when
black cottonwood24%
willow24%
bigleaf maple21%
red alder14%
vine maple14%
red-osier dogwood4%
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
