Twelve years of satellite record say the park turns north-to-south over eleven days. Here is where the wave is — and when it reaches your lake.
The raw view, with no interpretation — a fresh true-color mosaic from NASA every day. It is coarse next to our 10 m readings, but it lands daily, so it catches the turn the moment the ridgelines go while a cloud-blocked satellite pass is still days out. The color climbs the high ground first: watch the Adirondack dome brown out against the lowlands that ring it.
This is the picture; the ledger below is our reading of it. When the two disagree, trust your eyes — the satellite math trails a fast turn, and a report from the ground beats them both.
Oct 21 — color drains to the southern shores; Lake George shines alone.
The oxblood line is this season. The moss band holds every year since 2014 — running above the band means the color is arriving early.
| 2025 | Close to the long-term rhythm | +1d |
| 2024 | A notably late year | −10d |
| 2023 | A notably early year | +11d |
| 2022 | A notably late year | −30d |
| 2021 | A notably early year | +11d |
| 2020 | Close to the long-term rhythm | ±0 |
The satellite and the orbit image above read the canopy from above; these read it from the ground — live streams from around the Park, running in real time. For the full wall of cameras, including the village, summit, and lakeshore views, see the directory.
Live view over Mirror Lake in the heart of Lake Placid village — the lakeside beach, paddlers, and the High Peaks skyline behind. Hosted by the Ausable Freshwater Center (sponsored by the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort).
Live view from the 4,867 ft summit — the best real-time read on High Peaks weather. A clear cab here usually means a hike-able day on the 46.
Live view over Minnow Pond and Blue Mountain at the Adirondack Experience museum campus on Blue Mountain Lake.
| Region | State of color | Turned | vs normal | Peak forecast | Character | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keene & the High Peaks | Past peak | 94%Reader | −19 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | The park's first turn — summit color a week before the valleys | ||
| Indian Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −17 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | The central-lakes wave rolls through here | ||
| Long Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −16 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | Seaplane country — birch gold along the west shore | ||
| Paradox Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −15 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | Shoreline color doubled in still water | ||
| Blue Mountain Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −15 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | Museum weekends under first ridge golds | ||
| Old Forge | Past peak | 94%Reader | −15 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | McCauley's chairlift is the front row | ||
| Tupper Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −15 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | Boreal golds — tamarack finishes the show here | ||
| Speculator | Past peak | 94%Reader | −15 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | The Route 30 corridor turns all at once | ||
| Raquette Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −14 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | Great Camps under early gold | ||
| Great Sacandaga Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −10 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | Color over the season's last warm water | ||
| Lake Placid | Past peak | 94%Reader | −10 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | The peaks above town go first; the village follows | ||
| Saranac Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −10 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | St. Regis canoe country, gold over dark water | ||
| Schroon Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −9 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | Paradox spillover on a quieter shore | ||
| Brant Lake | Past peak | 94%Reader | −9 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | Hidden-valley reds off the beaten path | ||
| Lake George | Past peak | 94%Reader | −8 days | Past peak ≈ Oct 21 | The season's closer — oak country, latest peak in the park |
Tap a row for the reading behind it — how it was measured, how fresh, and how the sensors agree
Run an inn, a rental, a blog? Paste one of these and your visitors get the live tracker all season; it updates itself with every satellite pass. Pick the size that fits, and please keep the credit line beneath it.
Too early: the wave hasn't reached the park yet.
Too early: the wave hasn't reached the park yet.
Too early: the wave hasn't reached the park yet.
Peak windows are a forecast — each region's twelve-year typical peak, shifted by how early or late the color is running now. Book ahead: peak-week rooms in Keene and Lake Placid go first. Add the dates above to your calendar and it will remind you — no signup.
A satellite measures NDVI — how strongly the forest canopy reflects near-infrared light. As chlorophyll breaks down each fall, that signal falls with it, so the same instrument that watches the park green up in spring watches it let go in autumn.
Any single satellite pass over the Adirondacks is usually half-hidden by cloud — the mountains make their own weather. So each reading is a 10-day composite: every clear-sky pixel from a ten-day span, stitched into one cloud-free look at all six million acres. The trade-off is time — a composite spans ten days and posts about a week after it closes, so the freshest satellite reading always trails the hillside by a week or two.
Between composites — and when the upstream feed runs late — the map leans on the park's own twelve-year record and this month's nights to estimate where the color is, and on reports from the ground, which outrank any satellite. Every row in the ledger is tagged with its source: Reader, Satellite, or Modeled.
The upshot: a satellite reading is the ground truth when it is fresh, but it is never live to the day. This tracker fills the days between with the record and the weather — always labeled — so the map keeps pace with the hillside instead of freezing between passes.
Three pigments run the whole show. Which trees carry them — and when each species lets go of its green — is what paints the park in order.
In the leaf all summer, hidden under green. As nights lengthen, chlorophyll breaks down and the yellow that was always there shows through.
Brewed fresh each fall from sugars trapped in the leaf. Bright days and cool — not freezing — nights make the most of it. A great year is an anthocyanin year.
The last pigment standing. When the others fade, tannins hold the russets and coppers — beech and oak carry them deep into November.
Opens the season. The scarlet you see from the road in September — often while everything around it is still green — is almost always this tree, running early on wet ground.
The postcard tree. Carries the middle weeks in orange shading to flame, whole hillsides at a time — the same trees that ran the sap buckets in March run the show in October.
The trail-side maple — dinner-plate goosefoot leaves and green-striped bark, turning a clear lemon yellow at eye level. Moose browse it; the local name is earned.
Amber-gold against white bark — the Adirondack two-tone. Its cousin the yellow birch, bronze-barked and higher on the slopes, turns the same gold a beat later.
The shimmer. A flattened leaf-stem lets every round leaf tremble in wind the other trees don't feel, so a turning aspen stand doesn't just glow — it moves.
Copper to parchment — and then it refuses to let go. Young beech hold their pale dried leaves all winter, which is why the November understory rustles.
The late shift. Russet to deep wine-red after the maples have finished — the reason the Lake George shoreline peaks a full two weeks behind Keene Valley.
The season's last word: a conifer that turns smoky gold and drops every needle, lighting the bogs weeks after the hardwoods go bare. Most visitors never stay long enough to see it.
They don't gain color so much as lose their disguise. All summer, chlorophyll — the green engine of photosynthesis — masks the yellow and orange carotenoids that were in the leaf the whole time. As nights lengthen, the tree stops maintaining chlorophyll and the hidden pigments show through. The reds are different: anthocyanins are manufactured fresh each fall from sugars trapped in the leaf, which is why red years vary so much more than yellow years.
The recipe is a moist growing season, then a dry, sunny September with cool — but not freezing — nights. Bright days build sugar in the leaves; cold nights trap it there; trapped sugar becomes anthocyanin, the red pigment. The spoilers: summer drought, a warm wet fall, a hard early frost, and any big wind-and-rain day at peak — which can strip a hillside overnight.
Our own twelve-year satellite record is honest but short — it shows swings of four or five days in either direction year to year, more weather than trend. Longer studies across the Northeast point to peak color drifting gradually later as falls warm. That is exactly the question this tracker is built to answer over time: every reading adds to the park's permanent record.
Cold arrives first at elevation and in the northern valleys, and cold is the trigger. In our record the wave takes about eleven days to cross the park: Keene and the High Peaks go first, the central lakes follow, and Lake George — low, southern, and warmed by its own big water — holds out longest. The same gradient runs uphill: summits go over a week before their trailheads.
The very same. Acer saccharum runs the sap buckets in March and the hillsides in October — sweet sap in spring becomes trapped sugar in fall, which becomes the flame color that makes the species the park's headliner twice a year. It takes roughly forty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Visit a sugarhouse in season and you're standing under October's main event.
The Adirondacks hold dozens of native tree species across three great forest types: the northern hardwoods (sugar maple, beech, yellow birch) that carry the color show, the boreal spruce-fir forest that frames it in evergreen, and the pines on sandy ground. The eight species in our field guide account for most of what a leaf-peeper actually sees turn.
Aim your stay at your region's typical peak in the ledger above, and book the lodging before Labor Day — peak-week rooms in Keene and Lake Placid go first. The record's practical advice: the first three weeks of October cover peak somewhere in the park every single year, so a flexible base in the central lakes is the safest bet on a trip planned months out.
Our complete Fall field guide — the week-by-week foliage calendar by elevation and region, where to base, the foliage drives, easy summits with payoff, apple-picking and cider season, Oktoberfest weekends, and what closes when.
Read the Fall guide →
Our complete field guide to the park's best drives — overlooks, pull-offs, and the routes locals take when the hillsides go over. Time any of them to the ledger above: when a region reads Near peak, its roads are a front-row seat.
Open the scenic drives guide →