Welcome to Explore Fall! You may have already picked up on this, but if you haven’t… we’re a little crazy about fall foliage. Not in a bad way—don’t worry—but in a “we really love fall and wish it would never end” sort of way. We believe there are few things more enjoyable in life than a walk down a wooded trail beneath a canopy of yellows, oranges, and reds on a crisp fall day. Hearing the soft rustle of a chilly breeze overhead, feeling the crunch of dry leaves underfoot, taking in the stunning beauty of the changing foliage; this is the essence of fall.
Moments like these are what we hope to capture with Explore Fall. Our platform is centered around a fall foliage map like none other, allowing travelers to find beautiful fall colors and plan their trips accordingly. We offer daily updates and ten-day forecasts, ensuring that our fall foliage information is more accurate and up to date than any other source on the Internet.
None of this would be possible without our cutting-edge, in-house fall foliage model that evaluates real-time weather conditions and predicts how colorful fall foliage is throughout the Lower 48. Don’t get us wrong, we haven’t cracked the exact recipe for the progression of fall foliage, but our statistical approach allows us to minimize potential errors and quantify fall color. Explore Fall is the first venture to make a model like this public, and we’re proud of the quality of our product.
As for our accuracy, we estimate the fall foliage model is accurate within three days 80% of the time. We can’t claim perfection; however, we immediately address any errors we might find in the fall foliage maps and correct them to prevent travelers from acting on inaccurate information. Our fall foliage archive allows visitors to check our model against their fall photos from years gone by, putting quality control in the hands of the public, should they desire it.
At present, our model utilizes gridded temperature, precipitation, and daylight data to determine what stage fall foliage is in across the United States. Foliage will progress from No Color to Past Peak over the course of a season, but the rate at which it does this is determined by natural forcings such as diminished daylight hours and cold weather. Our model updates every night at midnight, using the latest gridded data. At the same time, it utilizes data from high-resolution weather models to generate a ten-day fall foliage forecast.
