Like the smell of kettle corn sizzling at the arts-and-crafts festivals and the muffled roar of a couple hundred thousand football fans echoing across the valley, Penn State’s autumn foliage forecast is one of the great traditions of this full-sensory season.
Millions of ‘leaf peepers’ will hit the roads and bike paths of the northeast hoping to find that one perfect foliage vista, where oranges, reds and yellows blaze away like a landscaping collaboration between Norman Rockwell and Jackson Pollock.
The peepers have learned to rely on research at Penn State to give them some idea of just how perfect the season will or will not be.