It’s finally starting to feel like fall in Austin, but it’s not starting to look like it.
Austin’s trees are either still donning green leaves or have already gone bare. Why isn’t Austin seeing brilliant fall foliage like in previous years?
The root cause – if you will – is the exceptionally hot fall Central Texas saw this year. The average daily high temperature in October was 91.6 degrees.
“A lot of trees have been stressed because of the heat and drought through September, October, November,” Karl Flocke, a program leader with the Texas A&M Forest Service, said.
Trees need a combination of rain and cold to reveal vibrant colors. Chilly weather and shorter days signal that winter is coming and it’s time to stop producing chlorophyll — the stuff that makes plants green.
“The leaf is not actually changing colors to red or yellow, what’s happening is the green is going away and you’re seeing the underlying other pigmentation within that leaf,” Flocke said.
But extreme heat and drought disrupt this process.
“They’re losing a lot of water through these leaves so they drop them as a conversation method,” Flocke said.
As for the trees that still have green leaves, Flocke says it simply hasn’t gotten cold enough yet for them to change colors.
The cold snap coming through this week could turn things around. Flocke said in 2022, he doubted Austin would see any fall foliage.
“Things looked pretty crummy all the way into mid-November, when we had a really hard freeze followed by some soaking rain,” he said. “At the end of November, start of December … it turned around.”
If temperatures stay low and the region gets more rainfall, fall colors are still possible.
“Folks that really love fall, keep your fingers crossed,” Flocke said. “We might see something happen here in the next couple weeks.”
