A Mild Autumn Is Keeping Us Greener Longer
Leaves are thrown off schedule after a spell of high temps

Staten Island Advance - Sunday, October 28, 2007

New York City's greenest borough is a lot less colorful this year.

Missing are the blood reds, golden yellows and bright oranges that normally dominate autumn.

Lingering summer-like weather preserved a mostly green scene among tens of thousands of Staten Island trees, delaying by two to three weeks the fall foliage colors that normally appear here in late October.

Though it is likely to be less spectacular when it does arrive, peak leaf-peeping season in the borough likely won't be upon us until closer to mid-November, experts predict.

"I'm afraid there's not going to be much left to turn," said West Brighton resident Rosemary Regan, who has swept up many bags of leaves that have fallen off green. The Hart Boulevard resident said fall colors to her represent nature's way of appreciating a summer of watering trees and shrubs outside her home.

"We're not getting that 'thank you very much' this year. I love the summer, it's my favorite season. But if we're going to have fall, I want it to be the right way."

Temperatures soaring into the 70s and 80s for much of this month, coupled with warmer-than-normal nights and a late-summer drought, have kept the leaves green longer than normal, said Dr. Gregory Cheplick, a College of Staten Island biology professor.

"This warm weather, it's just not normal," said Cheplick, who specializes in botany, adding that besides the delay in the appearance of fall colors, their intensity will be less dramatic. "I think it will be diminished a little because of the warm period. But we'll eventually get some pretty good color."

Last year, after a cooler September and October, foliage color here peaked the last week of October and most leaves had fallen off by Nov. 1, according to The Foliage Network, which each fall reports leaf changes in the Northeast from September to November.

Though some speculate that global warming is pushing back the annual fall foliage colors, the impact of climate change is "negligible," according to AccuWeather meteorologist Kevin Witt, who said that annual changes in temperature and precipitation in September and October are the determining factors from year to year.

An analysis of fall foliage maps from the last eight years showed no consistent trend in later or earlier peaks.

The unusually warm and dry weather in the last couple of months has been "tricking" trees into thinking it's still August or September, Witt said.

"All this additional sunshine is pretty much keeping the leaves green on the trees," said Witt, who studied at Penn State University's well-known Department of Meteorology. "This unusual warm weather has fooled a lot of these trees."

The lack of rain -- 2.4 inches below normal in September and below normal for most of October -- has caused many branches to lose moisture and leaves to crumple up and fall off before even changing color, he said.

Though it will only take a week to 10 days of cooler temperatures "to really get things going," Witt predicted that colors will be less impressive when leaf colors do peak and that the length of time they stay on the trees will be short-lived.

"Right now, there's not much going on but the next [week to week-and-a-half], we should look at a big change that should help to bring the seasonal change in leaves," said Witt, who predicted foliage colors to be at their brightest between Nov. 5 and 12.

The unusual fall weather is not just affecting trees and leaf-peepers.

Fall planting season, which runs from Oct. 15 to Dec. 15, is being delayed because the soil was so dry and the air so warm, said Allison Marchese-Cararo, an arborist from South Beach.

"The weather is just not planting-permitting," she said. "Nothing is happening right now."

Ms. Marchese-Cararo -- a Parks Department-licensed arborist who oversees construction projects in the city to make sure proper precautions are taken to protect trees from damage, and supervises planting of new ones -- said landscapers are struggling to get trees in the ground.

"We're just waiting for cooler, wetter weather," she said.

After a record-setting October, it seems that her wish may be coming true and then some, Witt said. AccuWeather predicts that temperatures later this week will be stuck in the 50s during the day and flirt with the freezing mark overnight.

By Glenn Nyback
Reprinted here with permission from the