Fall color is the reward at the end of the season and it is less dependable here than in the places the photographs come from.
The color itself is a chemical process that depends on weather. Warm sunny days and cool — not freezing — nights produce the best displays. A warm, dry September pushes the whole thing late and mutes it, and a hard early freeze can end it in one night, taking the leaves down still green. Both happen here often enough that a good year is a good year rather than the norm.
Drought does the same thing from the other direction. A tree that has been short of water through August drops its leaves early to cut losses, which is a sensible thing for a tree to do and the end of its fall color. Watering through a dry late summer is the one thing within anybody's control.
None of which is an argument against planting for it — a good October here is genuinely worth having. It is an argument against a planting that depends on it. Build the bones on foliage, form and winter structure, and treat fall color as the thing that makes a good year better rather than the thing holding the design up.
