Will Oklahoma’s Drought Ruin Fall Foliage Season This Year?

How Is Oklahoma's Drought Affecting Fall Foliage in 2026?

I'm not sure what we're going to get out of Oklahoma's fall foliage season this year. If you're asking me to guess, I'd lean toward a whole lot of brown. After the kind of drought we've been dealing with, I'm not expecting Mother Nature to put on a spectacular show, but...

I've seen fall colors show up in some pretty dry years, especially over in Eastern Oklahoma. Now, it wasn't the kind of color explosion that makes you want to spend an entire weekend driving around looking at trees, but there was enough color to make it worth getting out of the house.

Until the leaves make that dramatic change, we're not going to know exactly what we're going to get.

All the same, my little flame maple I grew from a seed started showing its orange hues over the weekend. It generally puts on a pretty stellar show of Oklahoma State Cowboy colors...

Kelso

But it also gets deeply watered and very gently taken care of all year round. In the places where Oklahomans go to see the fall colors, the forests have had to fend for themselves this year.

On that note, it's been a super-weird calendar year across Oklahoma.

We talked about how that incredibly warm last winter flipped nature's script when it came to propagation. I didn't see a single fluffy bud of cottonwood all summer long. I also didn't see any maple whirly-birds. It was great for the health of your outdoor air conditioner coils, but I'm curious if all that energy is being saved up for next spring.

Where Oklahoma's Fall Colors May Still Show Up

We shall wait and see. In the meantime, if there are places across Oklahoma that manage to push out some healthy fall colors, Eastern Oklahoma would be my first guess. Even in a rough year, there's a chance you'll find a few stretches of reds, oranges, and yellows worth the drive.

I've put together a gallery of some of the best places around Oklahoma to look for fall foliage. Whether the trees give us a show or simply go straight to brown, these are the spots I'd keep on the radar over the next few weeks.