After a punishing summer, Chattanooga may get a consolation prize - a beautiful fall.
While the exceedingly dry weather may have beat the grass into submission, it's a different story in the woods. The drought might have actually primed the trees for a good show.
"I think it's going to be better than people expect," said city forester Gene Hyde.
As fall kicks off, area residents continue to wrestle with the after effects of a harsh summer.
Two brush fires continue to burn on local mountains and every patch of grass in the area is shriveling to skeletal remains.
Dry conditions have hampered the efforts of firefighters to halt the progress of blazes on Fox Mountain in Dade County, Ga., Strawberry Mountain in Walker County, Ga., and Signal Mountain right here in Hamilton County, but there's little rainfall on the horizon to look forward to.
That's been the story for days now, a fitting end to one of the hottest, driest summers in Chattanooga history.
By Sept. 19, the city had hit 95 days of high temperatures above 90 degrees in 2016, tying the record set in 2010. And with those temperatures came the drought, which has reached the U.S. Drought Monitor's most extreme level in recent weeks.
Hyde said he can only guess what will happen, but explained the drought would probably do two things: delay the color change until the first half of November as opposed to the end of October, and bring out slightly different colors than usual.
He said that when the weather leading up to the change is warm, overcast and rainy, more yellows, browns and oranges can be expected.
"When you have a fall that you have a lot of early, cool weather, and you have chilly nights and the days are clear with electric-blue skies, kind of like what we're having now, that tends to bring out the purples and the reds," he said.
Another expert, University of Tennessee-Hamilton County Extension Agent Tom Stebbins, agrees.
"Our lawns look like they're gone, but trees do different things," he said. "They can reach down and get some water, and when we do get a rain or two, they know how to store it pretty good."
According to Stebbins, the maple trees in particular will be especially explosive, but he expects good color throughout the forest because minimal moisture and cooler temperatures tend to manipulate pigment levels in the leaves.
He explained there are three pigments in every leaf, two of which aren't visible until fall.
"The green is what we see and that's chlorophyll, but that's kind of hiding the other pigments. Once we start getting the shorter days, then basically the chlorophyll gets old or broken apart and it kind of reveals the oranges and the yellows underneath that," he said.
But more than most years, this fall's milder temperatures are likely to help formation of a pigment that brings out brilliant reds and purples.
"I think the drought may help us," Stebbins said. "I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict that."
The only thing Stebbins sees as a potential buzzkill for the fireworks is a drop in temperature or a string of extremely rainy days which would wash out the colors. But according to meteorologists, that isn't likely in the near future.
"Over the next week, we don't see any long bouts of heavy rain, nor do we see cool temperatures next week," said Jeremy Buckles, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn.
"The climate prediction center continues to show us in a dryer than average pattern and predicts the drought to persist or even worsen over the coming months."
At least the scenery will be colorful.
Contact staff writer Emmett Gienapp at egienapp@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6731. Follow on Twitter @emmettgienapp.