RUMFORD — Get ready for another spectacular fall foliage season.

That’s right, Maine’s autumnal forested mecca for thousands of leaf peepers is already showing signs of colors to come. And that bodes well for the fall tourism industry.

“It’s right on schedule,” Bill Ostrofsky, a forest pathologist with the Maine Forest Service, said Wednesday afternoon. “All regions appear to be on track for another spectacular season.”

Early Wednesday afternoon, Ostrofsky posted Maine’s first fall foliage report of the 2009 season on the state foliage Web site.

Forest rangers in Aroostook County and the northern portions of Piscataquis and Somerset counties are seeing low leaf color currently. That means colors are less than 30 percent toward peak, Ostrofsky said. There’s also very little leaf drop.

Color in the remainder of Maine is less than 10 percent toward peak.

Ostrofsky said rains that soaked the state all spring and the first half of summer were a boon to
leaf-bearing trees. But that doesn’t mean trees grew more leaves.

“The plentiful summer rain allowed the foliage to develop vigorously, and most crowns now appear full, dense and very lush,” he said. “Leaf-bearing trees throughout the state benefited from the wet weather, and are now healthy and primed for their annual color change.”

Good foliage development is a prerequisite for good fall color, he added.

Low-lying wetlands, which were flooded by abundant rainfall nearly every day through June and July and only just recently began drying out, and swamps, are showing more leaf coloration at the moment due to the stress.

“There’s a little more leaf coloration at wetlands and swamps now, but the colors are looking
pretty good,” Ostrofsky said.

The only downside he said he’s observed so far, is blight, or leaf browning, on Norway maples planted as ornamental trees in residential neighborhoods of big cities like Lewiston and Bangor and along the coast.

“Norway maples are not a native tree and many have a fungus disease that was very much aggravated by the wet weather,” he said. “I’ve seen quite a lot of leaf browning in
Bangor.

But on the bright side, Ostrofsky said he expects foliage color to reach peak as usual, during the last week of September to the first week of October.

Maine Department of Conservation spokeswoman Jeanne Curran said Wednesday morning that a forecast of temperatures in the low 30-degree Fahrenheit range for the rest of the week that prompted a National Weather Service frost advisory for early Thursday morning, could speed the onset of fall color.

However, Ostrofsky said he believes the chill alone won’t affect the season much.

Overnight temperatures in the low 40s and the continued decrease in daylight will spark the gradual change in leaf color from north to south through late October, he stated in his report on the Maine foliage Web site.

“Last year, the foliage color was really a nice one and will be hard to beat, but I think we’ll come close,” he said.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

Chlorophyll has started draining out of the leaves of deciduous trees like this maple in Rumford Center on Wednesday, leaving behind spectacular color while heralding the onset of Maine’s fall foliage season in the waning week of summer.

With the onset of autumn less than a week away, burning bush shrubbery lining a River Street park along the Androscoggin River in Rumford was living up to its name on Wednesday.

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