North Carolina: The Shortest Fall Out There

If you’re like us and were expecting a “Gilmore Girls”/ “One Tree Hill” fall when choosing to go to college in North Carolina, you too have experienced a serious disappointment. Our autumn season is lacking; we finally see beautiful orange and red leaves, and then you blink your eyes, and all the leaves are on the ground and the trees are bare. Then, the question arises: Why is the fall season so short in North Carolina? We decided to take matters into our own hands and do some research to answer this question, and we thought we’d share what we found.

WRAL News, a local news source, explains several reasons why the best season is so brief in North Carolina. When the weather is warmer later, and it’s still warm when the fall season is supposed to be amongst us, trees can get tricked into producing chlorophyll longer. This explains why the leaves stay green longer and only begin to turn yellow, orange and red later on. The days this year, when we would have stretches of 80-degree weather in the middle of October, are a perfect example of this explanation. Then, if there is a sudden extreme drop in temperature like we also experienced this year, the leaves become sensitive and are at risk of damage.

In addition, the warmth of spring coming earlier than it is technically supposed to can make leaves fall much sooner. Even factors such as pollution, weather like rain or droughts and insects can be behind the rapid changes of the leaves.

While the weeks we do experience fall are beautiful, it is hard to adjust to the fall weather before we have to start bringing out our puffer jackets. So take advantage of those few weeks; go to a pumpkin patch, drive through the farmland that’s 20 minutes away from campus and walk to all of your classes instead of driving. Because before you know it, even though it might have been 80 degrees last week, there could be frost on your windshield tomorrow.