BUFFALO, N.Y. — Coming in a week earlier than last year, leaf peepers have spotted the first few pops of fall color across upstate New York.
In the latest update of the ILOVENY Fall Foliage Map for Sept. 14 through Sept. 20, the best chance to see patchy fall colors is across the Adirondacks, Catskills, Hudson Valley, and portions of the Southern Tier stretching up through Buffalo and into Rochester.
While these are notable color changes, the color in each region is patchy at best, and the foliage change for other areas across New York State is expected to be 5 percent or less. This follows fall foliage climatology and previous years as, typically, fall colors first appear in regions of a higher elevation and farther north than south.
The typical peak for fall colors in the greater Buffalo area is usually sometime in early November. For the Southern Tier, it's late October.
But with the first sign of fall colors in the for Western New York arriving about a week ahead of schedule, this could mean the region experiences peak fall color in late October.
ILOVENY.COM's map is made through the culmination of visual reports from volunteer spotters and archived data from previous years.