ELMIRA, N.Y.(WETM) – With September starting, the thought on a lot of people’s minds are the changing colors of the leaves. It looks like our area might get lots of color due to all the rain we’ve been experiencing this summer.

“When we have a dry summer, we end up with less bright colors. When we have a wet summer, we end up with brighter colors in the fall foliage,” explained Gretchen Cicora, the Supervising Forrester at the DEC in region 8.

The reason for fall foliage is because of a trigger in the trees’ leaves to stop producing as much chlorophyll once the days gets shorter and the nights longer. That is why they lose the green color and gain red, yellow, and brown colors, according to Gretchen.

Even though we will most likely start see the colors change in the next two weeks, we are still quite some time away before peak fall foliage. This normally happens in mid-October, more specifically around the 12th to the 15th.

In New York State, we will see the foliage start in the Adirondacks before it reaches our region. Typically starting in the northern United States and moving south through September and into October and November.

If you would like to learn more about the foliage, you can visit the I Love NY website in the next week or two when it updates the foliage for this year.