What’s up with the exploding trees? The KSL Greenhouse Show explains winter tree damage
Feb 4, 2026, 12:37 PM | Updated: 1:18 pm
A tree limbs snapped by snow from a winter storm in the Avenues neighborhood in Salt Lake City on Sunday, March 6, 2022. (Mengshin Lin, Deseret News)
(Mengshin Lin, Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Usually people need to worry about the heat or power going out when temperatures reach extreme lows. Now, some can add exploding trees to the mix of worries…
KSL Greenhouse Show hosts Maria Shilaos and Taun Beddes went over why winter damage happens to trees, and most importantly, why some trees explode in those lower than usual temperatures.
KSL NewsRadio edited the following transcript for brevity.
Exploding trees after winter storms
BEDDES: “There’s been a few things that have made me want to talk a little bit about winter damage. One of them, in the northeast and the Atlantic states, where its gotten really cold, there’s been videos of these exploding trees.”
SHILAOS: “Exploding trees?”
BEDDES: “Yes. In the Midwest, I’ve heard of areas getting into, like Wisconsin and Michigan, down to four to below zero degrees Fahrenheit. So, the trees there had relatively mild weather and there’s a lot of sap in the tissue, and as that sap freezes, it expands and there’s so much pressure in some trees that portions of the trunks will explode.”
Winter damage on trees in Utah
BEDDES: “We don’t usually have the exploding trees in Utah. I have seen trees with winter damage but its more we went down to minus ten or minus 20 and in the spring all of a sudden you see these vertical cracks in the trunk that go into the heartwood and it was because of that expanding ice that damaged the tissue. But any wood that had moisture as the wood expanded, it formed these fissures and cracks and then in the summer it shrinks a little bit and they become a lot more apparent.”
Listen👇 to the full podcast episode
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