It has been colder and rainy the past four days. We’ve had about 2-1/2 inches of rain. It’s 47 on the porch at noon, and that was about the high yesterday. The weekend is supposed to be sunny or partly sunny, but the cooler weather will remain. The low is forecast to be 33 Friday night, with some frost. The weather service has issued a frost advisory for Friday night and Saturday morning.
The rain seems to have helped the leaf color. I’m pretty confident that this weekend will be the peak, although it will be a bit subdued, compared to other years. There’ still very little red in the woods, but some of the sourwood is a kind of a rusty red, and there’s a pretty bright persimmon in the neighborhood. Most of the color is some shade of yellow, and it shows up best in the afternoon, when the sun is shining horizontally through the leaves.
There are enough leaves on the ground to consider blowing them, but not enough to create a hazard to walking around.