Interested in the fall foliage of years gone by? We’ve got you covered with our fall foliage archive! Here you'll find an interactive map depicting the progression of fall color throughout the United States during the period 1991 to 2022.
This is the only multi-decadal fall foliage archive in existence, and we pride ourselves on accuracy to the highest possible degree. Utilize these maps to analyze local trends in peak fall foliage timing, or simply compare the current season to years gone by!
Our archive is powered by two different meteorological databases: RTMA and gridMET. Of the two, RTMA boasts significantly higher resolution (~2.5km) compared to gridMET (~4km), allowing it to better resolve small-scale terrain. This is ideal for fall foliage monitoring; however, RTMA is more difficult to process in archived form. As such, only the 2022 maps are currently calculated using RTMA data.
For the period 1991 to 2021, all maps are generated using gridMET data, thus resulting in slightly lower accuracy. In time, we hope to replace as many gridMET maps with RTMA maps as possible, thus offering improved accuracy for the past two decades.
