Almost a year after Hurricane Helene carved a devastating path through Western North Carolina, toppling millions of trees and gutting a key tourism season for the region, the Blue Ridge Parkway is once again open, and the mountains are ready to show off.
The scenic parkway starts at Rockfish Gap, Virginia, near Shenandoah National Park, and winds 460 miles to Cherokee, North Carolina, near Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In the storm’s aftermath, it was dotted with closures, with the worst damage occurring between milepost 280 to 469; at Gooch Gap in Little Switzerland at milepost 336, landslides caused the entire roadbed to collapse. The storm took down some 17 million trees across 822,000 acres—an area one and a half times the size of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Just ahead of the anniversary of Helene on September 24, the twenty-six-mile Craggy Gardens section reopened last week and unlocked 114 contiguous miles in the Asheville area, where Explore Asheville reports that 90 percent of businesses are back up and running. Even on the last stretch of Blue Ridge Parkway still closed—about thirty miles north of Mount Mitchell to Little Switzerland—a little section is open to allow visitors access to the Orchard at Altapass, a popular stop.
And it’s all just in time. September 22 marked the first day of fall, and the predictions for this year’s leaf show are promising. “The weather conditions have been ideal for a good fall color season,” says Dr. Howard Neufeld, a plant biologist at Appalachian State University known as the “Fall Color Guy.”
“After a hot July, August was unusually cool, and those low temperatures jump-started some of the trees,” he says. “However, it has been warm this past week, and color development has slowed down a bit.” He reckons that while the peak leaf-peeping window, which usually hits around mid-October, might be a little early, it won’t be by much.
Keep an eye out for strong reds in particular, Neufeld advises; cool, sunny days and crisp nights set up especially well for them, assuming there’s no October heat wave (read about the science of fall leaf colors here.)
As for the bare patches left over from the storm, they’ll spend the coming years moving through the stages of forest succession. “One thing going for us down here is that we have a long growing season, and many of the trees have the capability to sprout, which jump-starts their recovery,” Neufeld says. “So in a few decades, those blown-down patches may start to show good color.” In the meantime, there’s plenty of autumnal glory to go around.
Lindsey Liles joined Garden & Gun in 2020 after completing a master’s in literature in Scotland and a Fulbright grant in Brazil. The Arkansas native is G&G’s digital reporter, covering all aspects of the South, and she especially enjoys putting her biology background to use by writing about wildlife and conservation. She lives on Johns Island, South Carolina.
