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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_tree
I… did not know about this previously
Didn’t expect such damage
I naively thought it was some exploding in beauty kind of thing
Looks like that scene from Jurassic Park. Now that is one big pile of tree
Well that one was blown up by lightning so…
Looked too much like Australia for cold to be an issue
It’s 100% Australia. Can tell by the
sky and eucalyptspixels.
Jurassic Bark (NOT Futurama)
That’s a hell of a blast radius.
Definitely did not have this one on the ol’ bingo card.
ICE agents getting an interesting mix of Vietnam and Iraq.
And well, ice.
Don’t worry. They don’t actually explode.
Idk why the left side of ND is excluded, it’s -36 in Williston today.
The trees have probably already exploded. It’s how they knew to warn those east of them.
The danger of most things that explode, goes away once they explode.
It’s probably more about large variances in temperature over a shorter period. If it’s already -36 today and been similarly cold recently then the trees are already frozen. There isn’t a risk from internal liquid water freezing and expanding.
When I was a kid I read Brian’s Winter, part of the Hatchet series. He was scared by explosions while alone in the winter woods and found out in the end that they were exploding trees. Never forgot about that concept, but I never bothered to look up how big a tree can be and explode.
Sometimes I think how Minnesota is ranked the least stressed state
Other times I just think how
Maybe for the same reason that the Nordic countries are ranked as the happiest
Beer and cheese
Wood
Boom
We’d like to take moment to announce
Boom
ALL OUR TREES KEEP BLO-Boom
You ever see The Boys? Season 2, Episode 7, "Butcher, Baker, Candlestick Maker?
Like that. But trees.
Cue a bunch of AI vids.
America. I shouldn’t need to tell you that trees exploding is a sign we’re not on the right path
If it takes trees exploding and not … everything else that tips you off, you’re either a fool or not paying attention, or both.
forecasted
\sigh
Doed you not like this?
Ok, I live in Alberta, Canada. I grew up in the woods of Northern Alberta. We can get week long bouts of -40°C/F and I have NEVER seen or heard of exploding trees in the area. Are American trees just weak, or is this fake?
The use of the word “explode” is misleading. It’s definitely misinformation.
Here’s an arborist talking about it, but basically:
Trees move sap and other liquids up and down their trunk from the soil underneath regularly. For trees like maples, this is where maple syrup comes from, except you have to collect a lot of sap and reduce it down to syrup.
The arborist claims that these liquids present in the tree when the temperature swings faster than the tree can respond expand due to freezing, which buckles tree trunks causing the outer bark to crack open and separate. The cracks can be from the ground up, or they can look like gashes in the side of the tree. There’s moisture in the soil too, which can shift tree roots and cause similar cracking.
People say “explode” because there’s usually a popping sound when this happens.
In other contexts, people call this frost upheave. Engineers know about this phenomenon, and try to bury equipment like pipes and cable and conduit below the frost line so frost upheave doesn’t crack and break that stuff. With trees, this frost upheave just takes place inside the trees themselves.
Ok, that makes sense. I figured that, if anything, it would be frost weathering. That’s not an “explosion” in my mind though. Perhaps when a crack forms a lot of the tension in the wood is released and it can cause a sudden jolt or shift? If all the snow and frost on a tree suddenly jumped off after a loud crack I could see someone calling that an explosion. Definitely a lot of misleading terms and info kicking around. Thanks!
Trees further south have different conditions.
When we get cold snaps before 15f in the mid Atlantic tree sap that doesn’t usually freeze will freeze and limbs will pop. I’ve never seen a tree explode but I’ve definitely heard trees blowing limb and bits of themselves in the woods. Wind exacerbates the phenomenon
I’m going to guess it has to do with how quickly the temperature change occurs, or other environmental factors prior to the freeze. It seems to be a somewhat rare occurrence, even in places where it gets very cold
In Alberta a chinook can make the temp go from -20 to 20 in a matter of hours, the same backwards.
Huh TIL
The maximum daily temperature anomaly associated with the wind ranges from +13°C in the northwest to +25°C in the southeast. The temperature rise at the onset of the event is abrupt and steep; an increase of 27°C in 2 minutes has been observed.
They also create clippers on their way to the states, hence the term Alberta Clipper.
The chinook, which in part originates the Alberta clipper, usually brings relatively warm weather (often approaching 10 °C (50 °F) in the depths of winter) to southern Alberta itself, and the term is therefore not used in Alberta.
We uhh…. Just had a chinook last week, sorry.
The helicopter?
It was raining here two weeks ago. Temperatures were in the 20-30s earlier this week. It’s being far below freezing AND recent warm weather that’s the danger.
