Autumn's Algorithm: the Future of Foliage Forecasting

Summary

Off the Radar: Autumn's Algorithm - The Future of Foliage Forecasting

Hosted by Emily Gracey of The National Weather Desk

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Introduction

In the September 17, 2024 episode of Off the Radar, meteorologist Emily Gracey delves into the captivating world of fall foliage forecasting. Titled "Autumn's Algorithm: The Future of Foliage Forecasting," the episode features a conversation with Evan Fisher, a young and innovative meteorologist from Asheville, North Carolina. Evan has transformed the traditional methods of predicting autumn colors by developing a high-tech forecasting model through his website, Explore Fall.

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Guest Background: Evan Fisher

Evan Fisher, a 24-year-old meteorologist and UNC Asheville alumnus, is the founder of Explore Fall—a website dedicated to providing accurate fall foliage forecasts across the United States. With a degree in meteorology and ongoing graduate studies in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) at NC State, Evan combines his academic background with a passion for data science and mapping to enhance how fall colors are predicted and experienced.

“Explore Fall was really just kind of my pet project a couple of years ago. My idea to help people find fall color and it's grown since 2022 to become this website where people can visit and use interactive maps and really dive into the specifics of fall foliage across the country days in advance.” [04:38]

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Explore Fall: An Overview

Explore Fall distinguishes itself from traditional foliage maps by offering high-resolution forecasts that break down predictions into 16 square kilometer boxes—significantly smaller than county-based maps. This granularity allows for more precise predictions, especially in regions with complex terrains like the Appalachian Mountains and the Rockies, where fall colors can vary by up to three weeks within a single county.

“One of the things that actually inspired me to make Explore Fall was the fact that all of these fall foliage maps on the Internet, I think previous to Explore Falls birth was all of the maps were county based. And county based fall foliage maps are great in flat areas without much varying weather condition.” [05:24]

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Technical Aspects: Modeling and AI Integration

Evan's approach leverages real-time weather data and advanced computer models to forecast fall colors accurately. By analyzing factors such as daylight reduction, temperature fluctuations, and the production of anthocyanin—a chemical responsible for red leaf colors—his model predicts the onset and progression of fall foliage.

In the latest iteration, Evan has integrated artificial intelligence to enhance the robustness of his forecasts. By incorporating vegetation indices like the brownness index derived from satellite data, the model can better estimate the timing and intensity of color changes.

“We've been able to extract all of these fall foliage like time series in interpreted through the lens of brownness index from past years. So it ingests all of that data and makes a prediction of brownness index.” [12:39]

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Challenges and Accuracy

Despite the advanced technology, Evan acknowledges the challenges in achieving near-perfect accuracy. Variations in local soil moisture, drought conditions, and unexpected weather patterns can affect the timing of peak colors, making precise predictions difficult in some areas. However, Evan maintains that Explore Fall achieves an accuracy rate of 80-90% within a three-day window across the country.

“We may have peak color on one mountain two weeks before the next door mountain. They can be rarely kind of all over the place just depending on that local soil moisture condition.” [17:18]

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Current Season Forecast

For the 2024 fall season, Evan anticipates a vibrant display of colors across much of the Eastern United States, despite ongoing drought conditions in certain areas like West Virginia. He highlights regions such as New England, Utah, and Colorado as prime locations for peak foliage, each offering unique and picturesque landscapes.

“New England's going to be great. If you have to avoid somewhere, avoid West Virginia. But it would still be good if you, if you go there too.” [17:18]

Evan also points out the extended length of the fall season in the Southern Appalachians, which can rival, and in some aspects surpass, the traditional New England foliage period.

“That's really even longer than New England.” [20:03]

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Future Plans and Expansions

Looking ahead, Evan plans to expand Explore Fall's capabilities beyond the United States by developing a low-resolution global map. This expansion aims to include regions in Europe and Asia known for their stunning autumn landscapes, such as Romania, Japan, and South Korea.

Additionally, Evan is interested in diversifying his modeling efforts to encompass other seasonal phenomena, including skiing forecasts and rhododendron blooms in the Southern Appalachians.

“My goal for next year is to at least have a low resolution global map available to the public.” [26:36]

Evan also envisions collaborating with educational institutions and potentially publishing his methodologies to contribute to the broader scientific community.

“Inside of five years I would love to publish some of our methods.” [23:05]

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Monetization and Partnerships

While Explore Fall initially struggled financially, Evan reports progress through partnerships with tourism agencies nationwide. These collaborations involve licensing his data for use on external websites, allowing these agencies to offer accurate fall foliage information to their visitors. Evan remains open to exploring sponsorship opportunities, particularly for his emerging YouTube live streams, which aim to provide additional context and engage with a broader audience.

“We have evaluated and stepped into about a half a dozen partnerships with tourism agencies across the country who are looking to license our data and use them on their own websites.” [15:56]

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Public Engagement and Educational Outreach

Evan emphasizes the importance of public feedback in refining Explore Fall's models. Users are encouraged to report inaccuracies to help enhance the forecasting system. Moreover, Evan is actively working on educational content, including webinars with the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and YouTube live streams, to share his knowledge and engage with the community.

“If you find something that's inaccurate, please let me know. I know this map is not perfect. It's not a perfect science and it won't be for quite a while.” [24:20]

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Conclusion

Evan Fisher's innovative approach to fall foliage forecasting exemplifies the intersection of meteorology, data science, and public engagement. By leveraging high-resolution mapping and artificial intelligence, Explore Fall offers an unprecedented level of detail and accuracy in predicting autumn colors. As the platform continues to grow and expand globally, it promises to enhance how enthusiasts experience one of nature's most beautiful seasonal displays.

“I hope so. Thank you so much for having me on. And it was wonderful to chat about all this good stuff.” [27:19]

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Additional Resources

• Explore Fall Website: www.explorefall.com
• YouTube Live Streams: Follow Evan Fisher on YouTube for live updates and insights.
• American Meteorological Society Webinar: Upcoming webinar in late September featuring Evan Fisher.

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For more episodes of Off the Radar, follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform. New episodes are released every Tuesday.

Transcript

[Emily Gracie]

It's that time of year again. We're trading out flip flops for boots, filling our Pinterest boards with pumpkiny porch designs, and lining up at the Starbucks drive thru for that very first PSL of the season. It's fall, y'all, and this week we're going off the radar and diving into the world of high tech foliage forecasting with a meteorologist who's turned predicting autumn's palette into a science. He'll share his methods for timing out the colorful season.

[Evan Fisher]

So we forecast fall color in 16 square kilometer boxes, which is a lot.

[Emily Gracie]

Smaller than a county, and reveal the most Instagram worthy spots of 2024.

[Evan Fisher]

Yes, I wasn't all that aware of it before last year. It seems to be this magical land that's in need of further exploration.

[Emily Gracie]

So slip on some Uggs, cuddle up in that new sweater and get ready to be blown away as we explore fall. Because let's face it folks, it's not just a season, it's a lifestyle. I'm meteorologist Emily Gracey and you're listening to off the Radar, a production of the National Weather Desk. On the show, we dig deep into topics about weather, climate, the ocean, space, and much more. Our goal is to help you better understand the weather and to love it as much as we do.

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[Emily Gracie]

Hi everyone. Welcome to off the Radar. This year's fall equinox occurs on Sunday, September 22nd at 8:44am Eastern Time. As some call it. The Official start of fall of course, meteorological fall started on September 1st, so I'll let you decide now where I live in Charleston, South Carolina. Sweater weather doesn't really arrive for at least another month or later, but that's not stopping me from buying cinnamon brooms at Trader Joe's and decorating the house with tiny pumpkins. The other thing I like to do in fall is take a trip where I can actually see some fall foliage. And that's what today's show is all about. In fact, today's guest is from Asheville, North Carolina. It's actually a hot spot for leaf viewing if you're a Charleston resident. Evan Fisher is from Asheville. He went to UNC Asheville, as did I, to get his degree in meteorology. Evan is also the owner and founder of a website called Explore Fall. Explore Fall is much more than a website, though. It's the most accurate fall foliage forecast I've ever seen. The reason for that is Evan's fall foliage computer model that he created. It evaluates real time weather conditions and predicts how colorful fall foliage is throughout the country. So today I'm going to dig into that science with Evan, find out how he created this, just how accurate it is, and how he's also created an archive of historical fall foliage maps from years past. So if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to the show. Hit follow. Wherever you listen to podcasts, off the Radar has some exciting new episodes coming up in the next few weeks that you won't want to miss. Now please enjoy this pumpkin spiced conversation with Evan Fisher. Evan Fisher, this is very interesting what you do. Really glad to have you on today to talk about fall foliage which, you know, people go nuts for this stuff and I admittedly I do too. You know, I love a good pumpkin spice latte as much as the next woman, but I this is. There's a science to this too. You are a scientist. So I want to talk about fall foliage and the science behind it. But for people who don't understand or don't know, can you tell me briefly what Explore Fall is?

[Evan Fisher]

Sure. So Explore Fall was really just kind of my pet project a couple of years ago. My idea to help people find fall color and it's grown since 2022 to become this website where people can visit and use interactive maps and really dive into the specifics of fall foliage across the country days in advance. But also we try to give people some heads up weeks and even months in advance. We use some longer term forecasts now that they're really averages when they're way out in the distance. But still we do our best to guide people towards that best color of the season.

[Emily Gracie]

Cool. Okay. And we've seen fall foliage maps before, but I feel like yours looks totally different. Like the resolution is pretty impressive. So what makes your maps different than maybe some that we've seen in the past?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah, so one of the things that actually inspired me to make Explore Fall was the fact that all of these fall foliage maps on the Internet, I think previous to Explore Falls birth was all of the maps were county based. And county based fall foliage maps are great in flat areas without much varying weather condition. But unfortunately, when you're in complex terrain like western North Carolina or the Rockies out west, the fall color can be can vary by upwards of three weeks inside of a county. So it's not really correct to use those low resolution county boundaries. What I seek to do with Explore Fall is break it down into little bite sized chunks. So we forecast fall color in like 16 square kilometer boxes, which is a lot smaller than a county that makes up for about a million boxes across the United States. So it's a lot to manage and I've sort of tried to allow myself a little bit of slack this year and not having to spend every second of the day getting every single square. Right. But our goal is to be correct on average across the region, or at least be accurate within three days up to 80 to 90% of the country.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay. And the cool thing is too that like, I don't know where the data came from with these other fall foliage maps. But you are a meteorologist, right? So can you tell me about the weather factors that go into it and why being a meteorologist has been helpful in creating this?

[Evan Fisher]

So I think the weather is one of my, one of the other motivations in starting all of this. It's just fascinating how it is the main driver behind all of the fall foliage timing that we see and also the fall foliage and brilliance that we see. As we start approaching September, the days begin to come. Grow short enough in the lower 48 that fall color can actually begin to change. Now there's, it's a little bit different than summer stress color, which if you're already seeing fall foliage, like we saw a lot of color across the country in August. This is really kind of prominent in maples, in parking lots. These are stress trees. I don't consider that to be true fall foliage. But in September, once the days are short enough, the door opens and cool weather swoops. In and begins to kind of force that fall color change. The sciency part of it is the chlorophyll begins to break down in the leaf. And with enough cool nights and warm afternoons, you actually get the production of a chemical called anthocyanin. And that is what really draws out the red colors in these leaves.

[Emily Gracie]

That's my favorite. I love the reds, but I also grew up in New England and so like those maple trees, I. They have sucker for those.

[Evan Fisher]

They're beautiful.

[Emily Gracie]

They are. Okay, so take me back through your history too, because first of all, do you mind if I ask how old you are?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah, of course. I'm 24.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so you're quite young to be the owner and founder of this incredibly successful website and company. Can you take me through college? And then where this started, where you got the idea, and then kind of the timeline of how it played out. First of all, UNCA grad, just like myself, so very excited about that in Asheville. I mean, what better place to talk about fall foliage?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah, I know. Absolutely no, I can. There's so many things to go into this. That's another one of the reasons I started all this because it's just so beautiful around here. My college career was segmented into two parts. The first two years I spent in Charleston, actually down there where you are at the College of Charleston meteorology program there. It was wonderful. But Covid came around and to be honest, for in me, for me, in my life, it was actually a blessing because it helps me to reset after a couple of years of being in Charleston and surfing all the time and maybe not taking classes as seriously as I should. And I took a full gap year, moved back to Asheville with my folks. Covid was raging and it never will stayed inside. And I took that time to self teach a lot of these mapping skills that I have nowadays. My degree is in meteorology, so all of the gis, which is mapping and data science that I do, has generally been learned just because I have an interest in it outside of class. So that year really gave me. I would say it gave me a leg up because when I went back into my junior year at UNC Asheville, I had all these technical skills that weren't really being taught in the classes, but applied to everything that we did in class and additionally really gave me the chance to start broadening my horizons about what I wanted to do as I was approaching the end of undergrad. So ExploreFall was born, I think senior year at UNC Asheville and I don't think I did too many other extracurriculars because I was just pouring everything into creating these models and making fall foliage maps. And I had a vision for it. And after two years, I do think that vision is finally starting to come to fruition. But it's been a really fun journey since senior year. And even still, all the way back to beginning of college, it's wonderful to see how lucky I was to just be in a situation where I had the time to learn.

[Emily Gracie]

So senior year I was playing kickball and you were creating computer models. So I feel like a total slacker now.

[Evan Fisher]

I wish I had some kickball in my life. Senior year, that probably would have been good.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay. Did you do this alone? Did you have any help?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah. So I do have another partner in this. His name is Peter Forrester. And Peter is the one who kind of kicked me in the butt in 2020 and said, hey, you should learn some of these technical skills while you're in your gap year. He's a GIS professional. It doesn't work in the weather world, but regardless is brilliant when it comes to data analytics. So he has. I've done all the coding and all of the development, but he has very much so been at my side helping and suggesting some alternatives when I run into roadblocks as well as he's exceptional at the design side of things and I like to tell people in Explore Fall and in my other work, I'm not a graphic designer. I write really good code. But to make something pretty, it's a painful process. So Peter often helps me make the website look nice and make sure that all of the functionality that we have is actually useful to everyday people.

[Emily Gracie]

Yeah, it is. And it is really pretty. So impressive. Okay, so tell me, I heard that this year you're incorporating and I see this as a trend, artificial intelligence, into the forecast. Can you tell me how that works?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah. So last fall, our model was fall foliage model was pretty bare bones. It had the python, the coding equivalent of duct tape, just kind of holding it all together. So when the season wrapped up, it had done well, but I wanted to make it a little bit more robust. And I wanted to be able to also predict something that was actually meaningful. Not just a high color classification, but some physical quantity. So I did my research over the winter and found that there's a number of vegetation indices, essentially just measures of vegetation greenness that we can use to estimate fall color. And one of those is the brownness index. So I've used these AI models over the Winter to ingest weather data, daylight data. But the brownness index, which we have totally retrieved from satellites, which is actually pretty cool, we've been able to extract all of these fall foliage like time series in interpreted through the lens of brownness index from past years. So it ingests all of that data and makes a prediction of brownness index. And now we use thresholds to say, okay, brownness index has reached, let's just say 0.5. It's a scale from 0 to 1. So the color is. It's currently a high color classification.

[Emily Gracie]

Wow. Okay, so you've got AI, but then there's also like this whole human touch aspect of your website too, because you have a blog, right?

[Evan Fisher]

We do, yes. And I find that sometimes that is where I'm weakest is in the blog sphere. But I am trying.

[Emily Gracie]

Do you ever go to like AI and ask them to type something up for you?

[Evan Fisher]

I would never admit to that on camera, but it's possible. I've done that a time.

[Emily Gracie]

We've all done it. It's okay. Evan.

[Evan Fisher]

Yes. So I actually really trying to connect more with people through YouTube this year. I find that because there are like a million pixels on this map, there are certain spots that I'd love to provide additional context where I can't necessarily just put that on the interactive map. So just this past week we ran our first very rough around the edges live stream. And that's going to be my attempt moving forward to help people, kind of. At least I can share that knowledge that I have in my head where I say maybe that's not exactly right. I suspect that location is off by a few days on the map. We had like 30 views on the first live stream, so I don't know if anyone will ever actually watch, but it will for me. It's a great way to kind of connect.

[Emily Gracie]

Listen, let me tell you, that's not bad. That's not bad at all.

[Evan Fisher]

I'll take it.

[Emily Gracie]

Even if it was just your parents and your family and friends, it's still good. Are you hoping to get sponsorship for the YouTube streams? Like how. How do you make money at this? I guess I'm wondering.

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah, that's a great question. So last year we hardly made any money. It was pretty bleak. And that was okay. I knew it was going to be a launched kind of a launching season. But this fall has been really wonderful. We have evaluated and stepped into about a half a dozen partnerships with tourism agencies across the country who are looking to license our data and use them on their own websites. So we do keep restrictions on this that our interactive map can't be used commercially. Now, we're pretty loose with that when it comes to media use because we love to, we want to partner with the media to help just get that good word out there. But for other private companies, we won't let them embed it on the website. So these tourism agencies have reached out and we've actually worked worked out some deals to let them use it on their website and kind of brand it for their own styling. And that's generally how we're making money at the moment. I'd love to have sponsorship on YouTube. In fact, I have this wonderful dream of sending Peter on the ultimate fall foliage road trip where he starts in Alaska in August and just stays in peak color, driving all the way down North America into the Southeast through November. I would love to get that sponsored. That's, that's pretty pipe dreamy, but maybe one day.

[Emily Gracie]

So you need like a marketing and salesperson on the team next. That's right.

[Evan Fisher]

That's right. It's tough when you have a couple of weeks you're running this, but I think we're starting to learn a little bit more about the marketing world.

[Emily Gracie]

Yeah, yeah, you got it. I mean, it's kind of like Sirius XM radio where you give it away for free for a little while and then you're like, all right, now that you love it, you're going to start paying for it.

[Evan Fisher]

Exactly.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so let's talk about this season. Thank gosh. You know, I, we see a lot of like meteorologist content come in from TV stations. We get it over and over again every year. And it's a lot of the time it's the same thing. Like, here's what causes these colors and here's, you know, what it takes to have early fall, early fall. Can you tell me some of the really wrong information you see coming out about fall colors?

[Evan Fisher]

That's a great question. One of my biggest issues with a lot of the information that goes out is the fact that fall stressed fall color is bad fall color or an area that has high drought is going to have bad color. In some instances that is the case. But I've seen many drought stricken fall foliage forests that have been stunning. So that I always say that even if the trees are stressed going into September, even if you've had drought, heavy rains all summer long, all those things stress the trees. But don't worry too much because there's always, there's almost always a good show somewhere in your local area. Very rare for the leaves to just crumble up and fall off the tree. And there's no good color outside of that. I think generally the public or the media does a great job of explaining all this. The you can get lost in the details of the science. And I should probably write a blog about all of that because it's overflowing my mind sometimes.

[Emily Gracie]

Or do a YouTube live.

[Evan Fisher]

Exactly. In that we've got a couple of plans to. I was just telling Peter we need to do some science and YouTube videos. But nonetheless, the media does a great job of explaining, you know, that it's a rather simple relationship with the weather and if we overcomplicate it, it's really. You don't get that much more value out of adding additional layers of detail to these rather simple interpretations of cool nights and warm afternoons.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so what can we expect this year? Any. Any trends you're seeing for the 2024 season?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah. So across the east coast, unfortunately we do have a lot of drought. And going right back to my caveat from, from a minute ago, that does not mean that the fall color season is going to be a bust across the East Coast. I think even places like West Virginia, where we currently have severe to extreme drought ongoing, they'll still see some decent fall color. But that does generally make fall foliage more erratic. So we may have peak color on one mountain two weeks before the next door mountain. They can be rarely kind of all over the place just depending on that local soil moisture condition condition. So unfortunately, that also means that it's difficult for our maps to be perfectly accurate when we have that kind of small scale variation. So I expect that we're going to be doing a lot of fine tuning of really local details on our fall foliage map. But for everyday people who are just trying to make plans, there's. You can't really go wrong. New England's going to be great. If you have to avoid somewhere, avoid West Virginia. But it would still be good if you, if you go there too. England will be wonderful. Like I said, Utah and Colorado are shaping up to have a great season. In fact, we already have some colors turning out there, which is really nice. And the Southeast, we'll see. It's been all over the place this summer with heavy rain followed by drought that leads to stress. How exactly that will manifest itself come late October and November? Not sure yet. We'll have to get a little bit closer and see how things are going.

[Emily Gracie]

Okay, so let's say you're doing like a new England tour. What's timeline wise? What do you think is like the best? Maybe be narrowed down to two weeks.

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah. So the best two weeks if you're high elevation. So let's say you're in Adirondacks or you're in the Green Mountains or White Mountains. These are all places in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire. The first two weeks of October are where you want to be. If you're more in the Massachusetts area or lowlands, more coastal regions of Maine and New Hampshire, then you might be looking more at the second two week or, pardon me, the last two weeks in October. I'd like to provide wide ranges because maples peak first and then oaks go after that. So there's definitely color to be found all throughout those two week periods.

[Emily Gracie]

So you're probably not going to miss it. Like, that's the thing I like about. You know, we were just talking about. I love to go to Asheville in the fall. Everybody from Charleston goes to Asheville in the fall. And it really doesn't like you go anytime October to November. And I feel like you would find a spot on the parkway where there's colors, you know.

[Evan Fisher]

Yes. And that's the best thing about this region. Starting really 9-30-30 first, you can start finding peak fall colder somewhere along the Blue Ridge Parkway if you just work for it. And that lasts all the way to early November, which is so neat about this area. And in fact, it's one of the reasons why I think the Southern Appalachians can rival New England because of the length of our season. It's really even longer than New England.

[Emily Gracie]

And then of course, there's kind of like the underdog. I feel like Utah. I never have thought Utah when I think fall colors. But every like drone photo situation I see coming out of Utah is ridiculous.

[Evan Fisher]

That's right. It is. It's crazy. And to be honest, I wasn't all that aware of it before last year either. Peter is going to be heading out there in a couple of weeks to go do some sightseeing and take some wonderful photos. He's an excellent photographer, so I'm excited to really see what he uncovers because it seems to be this magical land that's need of further exploration.

[Emily Gracie]

You have such a fun job. Like you get to. This just makes people happy. Like, nothing about this weather computer model is doom and gloom. It's all just about happiness. So I'm curious, do you have plans for like anything else, like a skiing computer, any other lifestyle type of computer models?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah, that's A great. Another great question. So with the skiing industry, that is something I would love to get into. It's also something my other employer is getting into. So I'm kind of just going along that path with them at the moment.

[Emily Gracie]

Probably more money in the skiing industry.

[Evan Fisher]

Yes, definitely there is. And not to say that there isn't a lot in the fall foliage because it's a remark. It continues to blow my mind how robust the fall foliage tourism market is. But there certainly is more in skiing. This is more niche for me. But I love the rhododendron bloom and the Southern Appalachians. And while that isn't necessarily going to be a big money maker, people love to come up and see them and we always. The parkway is always busy in peak roto season in June. So I love to do a little bit more with that modeling as well and just help people find all of that. The great fun nature things they love to do.

[Emily Gracie]

Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. My dad used to always say the rhododendron bloom on my birthday in Connecticut. It's always the end of May in Connecticut. So.

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah. Oh, I didn't, I didn't realize they had them up there.

[Emily Gracie]

Yeah. Oh, they're. Yeah, they're very bright. Is this your full time job now or do you have another job?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah, so I. This may become a full time job. I'm currently in grad school as well. So. I do grad school. I work for a wonderful company, Monarch Weather and Climate Intelligence with a couple of. A few great meteorologists. And then Explore Fall is the third in the on the list. Generally Explore Fall is the most exciting for me, but it's also the biggest risk. So I'm always trying to balance finishing up school this year and evaluating full time opportunities once I'm out of school and considering whether or not Explore Fall could truly be full time next year.

[Emily Gracie]

Cool. Well, that'd be awesome. Where are you in grad school?

[Evan Fisher]

So I'm in a remote program through NC State. It's a master's in gis.

[Emily Gracie]

Are you teaching the courses or.

[Evan Fisher]

I'm learning a lot. It's. They use a lot of programs that I can't stand to use. So in some ways that drives me crazy. But I know it's actually a good thing in a long run.

[Emily Gracie]

Have you ever teamed up with other universities at all with your data? Is there like any educational aspect, I guess to what you're doing?

[Evan Fisher]

Sure. So inside of five years I would love to publish some of our methods. I am generally sitting on a lot of our more proprietary stuff just for a few years to get the get an advantage over some of our competitors in the private sector. But I have no problem with sharing this. In fact, I love to talk about it and I've probably shared far too much in past podcast episodes that people could duplicate all of our methods if they wanted to, just because I can't stop talking. Nonetheless, we do, I do try to be educational with it. So I'm doing giving a webinar in late September with a with ams and I think that'd be a great opportunity to just share a little bit about what we do as well as I, I get a lot of requests from undergraduates, graduate students and professors as well wanting to use the data and to the best of my ability, I try to grant that where I can. In instances where it's going to be compromising to our methodology, I'd like it circled back in a couple of years.

[Emily Gracie]

I wonder if there's any other way it could be used. Like, like, I don't know, like what about the Christmas tree industry? Is that, is it something that could be used for them?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah, it almost certainly is. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of applications that aren't necessarily as interesting to the public but are very interesting to more kind of private sector folks. And Christmas tree industry is certainly one of them.

[Emily Gracie]

Can you tell us where we can find all this information and what the general public can really benefit from here on your website?

[Evan Fisher]

So if people want to find more fall foliage maps, they can Visit [e-mail] We do have one main interactive map for the United States. So if you go to the website or fall.com, there's a button that says find fall color near me or something to that effect. Click that big old button and it'll take you right there. Just explore the map. You can search for a location. We added some search bar functionality this year. And importantly, if you find something that's inaccurate, please let me know. I know this map is not perfect. It's not a perfect science and it won't be for quite a while. So my goal is to always improve it and it helps to hear when and where I'm wrong.

[Emily Gracie]

You know, it's cool too. I like that you can go back and look at past data because that way when like your mother in law says, you know, like, oh well, the colors were actually so much better last year at this time, you can actually go back and either prove her right or wrong.

[Evan Fisher]

That's so true. I love that archive. Not too many people spend time in there, but I can get lost in that thing. Just exploring the trends over the years.

[Emily Gracie]

Cool. How far, how far back does it go?

[Evan Fisher]

At the moment, it goes to 1991. I could really run it as far back as we have data. So Era 5 would take us back to what, 1940 or something like that. But I'm waiting until I feel like our fall foliage model is finalized and I'm making new versions of the model every three days. I think I have a problem with wanting to be as accurate as possible. It's not a bad thing necessarily. But one day, once the fall footage model is finalized and I'm done training it, I'll run it all the way back to those old days.

[Emily Gracie]

You know, it would be cool, Like, I'm so into forensics right now. It would be so cool if somebody came to you and I was like, we're recreating, like, a movie from 1949, this historical situation. Can you tell us what the, like, the scenery would have looked like? And you can just pull it up. That's so cool.

[Evan Fisher]

Absolutely. And that's. You just touched on something that drives my wife crazy, but I love it. Fall foliage and movies and TV shows. It seems like there's always. It's always fall in all of these shows. And whenever it's, you know, a scene is set in New York and I see peak fall color, oh, November 17th or some somewhere right around there. It's so neat to be able to just kind of identify across the country in each of these shows what the timeline might be.

[Emily Gracie]

Oh, that's so cool. Do you ever look at, like, other countries like Scotland and England?

[Evan Fisher]

Yeah. So my goal for next year is to at least have a low resolution global map available to the public. The equations that we use, the model that we use, should work all across the globe. And I'm excited to test that in the off season. Currently, it's just a matter of workflow, making it all work without overwhelming myself. But there's some wonderful fall color out there. I mean, Romania is one of my personal favorites at the moment. I love to visit sometime. I think their fall color could rival New England. But other places throughout Europe that are beautiful, in Japan, South Korea, stunning as well. Lots of reasons to expand.

[Emily Gracie]

Awesome. Well, Evan, thank you so much for your time today. This is so fun. Everybody loves fall, so I think this is going to get everybody in the fall mood here.

[Evan Fisher]

I hope so. Thank you so much for having me on. And it was wonderful to chat about all this good stuff.

[Emily Gracie]

Off the Radar is a production of the National Weather Desk. Make sure you're following the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes publish every Tuesday. If you have a friend that's nuts about fall, make sure you share this episode with them. Huge thanks to Evan Fisher. Make sure you keep checking his website, Explore Fall over the next couple of months. You can also follow them on YouTube. He does these YouTube lives that he spoke about. You can ask him questions live as they do those. For the National Weather Desk, I'm meteorologist Emily Gracie. Make it a great day.