Climate Change Report 2015 Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas:
Two and a half months of spring was filled with lightning and heavy rain. The lightning made it nearly impossible to hike and see the wildflowers blooming in the mountains. Late spring and summer no rain. Trees in parts of the park have begun to turn rust shedding their leaves as they dried from lack of moisture. An eerie false autumn of rust leaves was created by the rainless months. Leaves that will not be part of the spectacular transition of fall colors. These Trees are masking another sign of climate change.
Every year in the park one Tree (located on the south face of North Mountain) always starts the autumn change before all the others. Not leaves drying from lack of water in late summer (as mentioned above) but a spectacular showing of RED. I went back through my photographs for the past 5 years and found September 20 – 25 was the date it usually started the color change (years 2010 – 2014). It is August in Arkansas and for the past week the temperatures in the morning have been in the low to mid 60s. We should be experiencing low to mid 80s each morning when we head out to hike at 7:30 am.
Up north and out west (in the United States) a heat wave rages while we are experiencing late September early October temperatures.