While these colors seem early, Utah State University horticulture professor Katie Wagner said the higher elevations usually see the change first.
“I'm down in the Salt Lake valley area and there, we're seeing, kind of the beginning part of October,” she said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Friday. “We're starting to see some of our fall colors in the higher elevations. And then later into the fall, we'll start to see the colors changing in southern Utah.”
Wagner said shorter days and longer nights trigger the leaf color changes.
“Chlorophyll is produced in the leaves of trees, and that's, of course, what the tree uses to make energy for itself,” she said. “And so what you're seeing is you're seeing masked pigments that were always in those leaves. It's just the chlorophyll was dominating them so you couldn't see them before.”
The colors can vary depending on the consistency of moisture.
“Color really is best if we have kind of consistent moisture throughout the growing months,” she said.
That means even winter snowfall can influence the fall color show. This year’s state measurements show Utah had its sixth driest summer and one of the driest water years since 2015.
Wagner said leaf peepers can still find the colors if they know where to look.
“Just do some canyon drives. If you can get out and you can hike, sometimes that's the best way to see the fall colors, in my opinion,” she said. “Because sometimes you get these little hidden pockets or you get these really beautiful specimen trees that you're not necessarily going to see from the roadside.”
Near the Wasatch Back, the Provo Canyon Scenic Byway offers views of aspen and maple trees along state Route 92. Hiking trails and scenic drives in the cottonwood canyons can offer an array of colors as well.
