Interactive Fall Foliage Map Predicts When Leaves Will Change Color Across the U.S.

"Our end goal is to produce a map that's useful and fun," David Angotti, the map’s creator, said ahead of the fall season

An interactive map is predicting when leaves will change color across the United States this upcoming fall.

David Angotti, the map’s creator, crafted the website SmokyMountains.com as a way for travelers to find the "perfect smokey mountains cabin," and he added the annual fall leaf map as a tool to make the most of those trips.

Revamped annually, the 2023 version of the map is now ready and highlights when the changing leaves will move across the country, which can be seen by dragging a tool across a timeline from Sept. 4 to Nov. 20.

According to the map, fall foliage on the West Coast should start by mid-September, before the Midwest will see color start to peak in October. The East Coast should then peak around early October, while the Southeast will start to see the same by mid-to-late October.

Described as "the ultimate visual planning guide to the annual progressive changing of the leaves," the map warns, however, that "no tool can be 100 percent accurate," adding: "This tool is meant to help travelers better time their trips to have the best opportunity of catching peak color each year."

“After publishing our predictive fall foliage map for nearly a decade, we are confident in our data sources, process and algorithm,” founder Angotti said in a statement to The Washington Post.

In another to Travel + Leisure, he added, "Similar to a weekend weather forecast, the timing of our map update is important. The backbone of the map is meteorology."

"With our unique blend of historical and forecast data, we are able to make a highly accurate prediction by the end of August. The drastic year-to-year changes dictate that we create a new map from scratch with new data each year," Angotti continued. "Our end goal is to produce a map that's useful and fun."

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