Natural History Wanderings

Appalachian State University reports

t’s been hot (like 10 degrees above normal hot) for the past week and we’ve had essentially no rainfall (just a mist on three days). You can check out the history of Boone weather over the past few months here:https://weather.com/weather/monthly/l/Boone+NC+28607:4:US. We have had only 0.07” of rain since the first of September and the last rainfall of any substance was only 0.38” on August 21st. It is DRY here and the drought monitoring system now has us in a moderate drought category:http://www.ncdrought.org/hires.php while the southern portion of the mountains is in even more severe drought conditions.

These weather conditions tend to slow down and delay the onset of fall leaf colors, and when I compare this week to last week, I don’t see much of a change. There is more color development among the ornamental red maples in Boone, and a few red maples and sourwoods are turning in the woods, but aside from those, and a few sassafras, it is still very green up here.

Read more at Appalachian Fall Color

See photos at  https://drive.google.com/…/fol…/0BxpSVO5IUz-EU1lNUHVzZEdtMDA