1899.
October
  The 1st & 2nd were bitterly cold day for the 
season with piercing N.W winds and temperatures were
below freezing over the greater part of New England (22 [degrees]
at Concord on the 1st, I am told) and flurries of snow
in the more northern portions. On the mornings of the
21st and 22nd the surface of the ground was frozen hard
(at Concord.) The remainder of the month was exceptionally 
mild with a number of almost uncomfortably warm
days and, for the most part, dry, clear weather although
heavy rains fell on the 18th, 20th, and 31st and
light ones on the 6th, 9th, 23rd, 28th & 29th. They
were insufficient to affect the ponds, streams, wells
and springs which remained at a very low ebb but
they kept the grass green throughout the month.
[margin]Weather[/margin]
  The autumn coloring reached its height on the 12th
& 13th when it was more varied & brilliant than I
remember to have seen it before, at least in Massachusetts.
This was due largely, no doubt, to the fact that the
foliage of the oaks and beeches turned this year at the
same time as that of the maples, tupelos, chestnuts, elms, 
birches & poplars - something unusual if not quite
unprecedented. Nearly all these trees shed their foliage
in one forenoon -  that of the 14th - when I happened
to be in the Estabrook woods at Concord. The morning
had been cloudy, densely foggy and perfectly calm up
to about 10 o'clock when the sky cleared and a
brisk N.W. wind arose. For the next hour the falling
leaves filled the air as thickly as snow flakes and the
surface of the ground was soon covered deeply by them.
By noon most of the trees were perfectly bare. Never before
have I seen the woods so quickly & completely stripped of their foliage.
[margin]Autumn 
coloring[/margin]
[margin]Oaks & maples
change color
at same time.[/margin]
[margin]Fall of the 
leaves[/margin]
160