New England is having a massive fall blast this year. Other states are not so lucky.

New England’s fall colors are typical this time of year, but fall leaves are just as colorful as anywhere else.

ExistenceFlorida Although Kyle Cotner knew nothing about autumn leaves when he was growing up, in 2007, hewhite House A co-worker began calling himself an expert on autumn leaves.

Each fall, he sends his colleagues a weekly newsletter with fall statistics and information. Today, he calls himself “Leaf Daddy” and runs “The Foliage Report,” a website that tracks changes in autumn colors across the United States.

That’s why he was able to make it clear last week that 2026 will be the best year yet for fall foliage in New England.

“I’ve been doing this for about 20 years, and this is the best fall year I’ve seen in New England in all my years,” he said. “2020 was great, but this year is the best in my opinion.”

He said that New England had good rainfall in the spring and summer, as well as warm days and cool nights before fall, but that this was not the case in other areas.

For example, extreme drought in Colorado has stressed trees, causing leaves to grow faster and be less attractive. Cotner said Wyoming, Montana andidaho The leaves of poplar trees in 2026 are not as golden as in previous years. But the situation is very different in Utah.

“There’s been a fair amount of rain,” Cotner said. “For the leaves to really show off their most majestic, colorful colors, ideally it will be around average rainfall.”

According to experts at the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, fall leaf color change is the process by which trees prepare for winter.

Leaves exist to provide nutrients to the tree. They absorb sunlight through a green pigment called chlorophyll and convert the energy into water and air into carbon dioxide and ultimately glucose. As daylight hours decrease and trees stop producing nutrients, the leaves’ pre-existing orange and yellow colors begin to appear. When clear days are followed by cool nights, sugars become trapped in the leaves, producing the red colors.

Eventually, the cell layer between the branch and the leaf weakens, causing the leaf to blow away in wind and rain. The timing of leaf fall varies in different regions. According to Cotner’s research, the fall season begins in mid-August in Alaska and ends in late December in Florida. Hawaii is the only US state that doesn’t have autumn, he said.

Osama Alshamrani of Saudi Arabia did not expect to see such beautiful sights in Woodstock, Vermont.

“There are many colors,” he said on the 16th. “I got a lot of messages from my family at home, and they said to me, ‘Is this real? Oh, it must be AI.’ And I thought, ‘No, this is real.'”