One of the draws to living in North Carolina is that you get all four seasons.
During the fall, some may await the first frost or freeze – whether it's to get rid of pests, allergies, do outdoor chores you've been putting off, etc.
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Some of us have seen patchy frost in recent days, but a widespread freeze has yet to happen.
The long-term average shows the first freeze happens in the last week of October.
According to our forecast, that will not be the case this year. In fact, that hasn't been the case since 2015.
The first fall freeze is happening later in recent years. I took the average first occurrence of 32° or below over the last 80, 50, 25, ten and five years.
There's a clear trend. The first fall freeze is happening later with each time series sampled below.
If you're not a fan of the cold, you'll take that kind of news. However, there are consequences/results to a later freeze.
- This prolongs the growing season, meaning that weed and grass pollen can spread longer. (We've been hearing more coughing and sneezing in the studio recently during this warm stretch.)
- Pests, like mosquitoes, will linger. I saw that just the other day when I was doing yard work (even after some of our cooler mornings recently).
- Lastly, this can delay the peak for fall foliage. This oftentimes means a much narrower window of colorful leaves in our area.
Explore Fall is an organization, led by a meteorologist in Asheville, North Carolina, that collects reports on fall foliage. Because of Helene, some of the information has been tough to gather and release.
The most up-to-date foliage map from Explore Fall shows a little change locally. Helene's wind (among other obvious impacts) defoliated some of the trees in our higher elevations.
On average, we tend to see peak fall colors in this part of the state in early November.