Not much about 2020 is normal or easy, for that matter. Just getting from place to place presents challenges. Best practices and guidelines change quicker than an autumn breeze. A face mask and hand sanitizer are now camera bag essentials. So what would Mother Nature have in store for Vermont and the rest of New England this Autumn season?
It turns out that she provided a typical fall foliage season for Vermont in most aspects that make up a typical season. The one difference was the duration. If you blinked, you missed peak foliage, especially the farther north you ventured. Vermont experienced an unusually earlier cold snap the third week of September that gave trees an early start gun. For the most part, the weather cooperated all season. There were no big tropical systems that passed through New England. Large storms have a big impact on early leaf drop. After the early freeze, the temperatures over the next few weeks remained average to a little above average. An ideal situation for vibrant color is warm sunny days and cold crisp nights. There were many cloudy, warm days with misty balmy nights, not the best combination for vibrant, robust leaf color. All of these conditions combined to make peak foliage color a quick event. If peak foliage is your only intent, then you may have been disappointed. By its peak performance, judging a foliage season will not see the forest through the trees (pun intended). It reduces the whole season to a moment in time, and that moment is impossible to predict. This sets you up for disappointment more times than not.
A fall foliage season is a journey with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and each part has its own special qualities worthy of any photographer’s attention. There are no guarantees any part of the season will be spectacular or even acceptable. Each part is both interconnected and separate at the same time. A poor start does not mean a poor ending, and so on. Events that generally have negative effects can actually create unique opportunities if you know where to be and when. The humid, balmy evenings this year created lots of mist and fog in the mornings. This was match by several day periods in which there were very calm winds and no winds for most of that time. Knowing these conditions would exist each morning allowed me to select locations that would maximize my dynamic image chances.
Whatever the conditions Autumn in Vermont never disappoints. The difference between a “good year” and a “bad year” is extra effort is required to find the jackpot during a “bad year.” It’s all around you in a good year.
2020 did not disappoint; it was perfect up north but disappeared quickly. Central Vermont followed quickly but stayed a little longer, and southern Vermont provided a lasting impression and I reminder of what lay ahead – A cold, snowy winter. Here’s to Autumn 2021 and the hope that it arrives quickly.
