Madison Eisaman Staff Writer
Throughout September and October, I have kept asking myself, why doesn’t it feel like Fall yet? We have the pumpkin spice galore and the Halloween frights, so what’s missing? At first, I thought this could be the unusually warm October we have had, but I also noticed there is less color in the leaves.
I contacted Joe Murgo, a local meteorologist and Meteorology instructor for Penn State Altoona, to ask the question on everybody’s mind recently: Where is all the fall foliage?
By Madison E. Eisaman
The answer is a mixture of the warm, humid nights and the amount of daylight we have. With the oceans being warmer than normal and the humidity higher at night, it prevents the temperature from being cool.
The chlorophyll, a substance in plants which gives them their green pigments and nourishes them, needs to be broken down by the temperature in order for leaves to express their orange, yellow, or red color. Murgo explained that the leaves always have their colors, but their chlorophyll is what makes them usually appear green.
However, the temperature just isn’t providing enough for them. The early sunsets start breaking down the chlorophyll, but the warm temperature isn’t allowing the leaves’ underlying colors to be expressed. With the wind that comes in fall, especially the end of it, the leaves will start getting stripped off the trees.
Murgo mentioned, “If you notice, a lot of the leaves that are dropping are just brown. The leaves are dead, but we’re not getting the color before they die…Once they’re dead, they get that brown color, and that’s why it’s a lot of dull.”
Murgo then went on to comment about the amount of rain we have had, “Unfortunately the oceans are warmer now… that’s the reason why we’ve been having so many downpours and so many of the heavier rain events. It’s not causing it to rain more… but it’s one of those cases that it allows you to get more rain whenever it does happen.”