Anyone itching to sip pumpkin spice lattes during sweater weather and go leaf peeping will be happy to hear that the forecast for this year’s fall foliage is “vibrant.”

That’s according to Aaron Cook, a forester with the Maryland Forest Service.

“We had a wet spring, a reasonably wet beginning to summer and a somewhat normal winter leading into the spring,” he said, adding that those are all conditions that have kept the region’s trees in good shape heading into the fall.

John Seiler, professor of forest biology at Virginia Tech, agreed, saying the conditions were “really good, we didn’t have any extended dry spells.”

But both Seiler and Cook said August was dry, and so far September has followed suit.

“I’m somewhat concerned by the flash drought that’s taken ahold here in the last

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