Kamchatka is not the only region experiencing record frosts and snowfall. The US government is warning people in many states about unprecedented cold caused by the polar vortex; What's more – city dwellers need to be wary of trees exploding due to frost. But is it true that plants can explode due to temperature drops? Portal popsci.com found it because of the cold weather and the myth of the icy blast.
The record frosts in the US are not a natural phenomenon but the result of a combination of many very specific factors. More specifically, a polar storm and the ongoing climate crisis. Although tornadoes are only noticeable when the weather is right, they are actually one of two forms of air that continuously circle the planet's polar regions.
In the northern hemisphere, polar vortexes spend most of the year over the Arctic, but sometimes extend farther south after interacting with the unusually warm upper atmosphere. Add in the humidity of California and the Gulf of Mexico, and you get a lot of cold air, heavy snowfall, and potentially dangerous conditions for humans.
But in the Southern Hemisphere, the situation is completely opposite. There, the polar vortex around Antarctica moves gradually northward and usually does not cover the same number of densely populated areas as the Arctic cyclone.
It seems that such polar storms are happening more frequently recently than in the past – and this is true. Several studies have shown that the frequency of such weather events is increasing, many of them due to rising temperatures in the Arctic.
Storms like these can be life-threatening without proper preparation. Anyone not adequately protected from cold temperatures can quickly fall into hypothermia — within as little as an hour. Damaged power lines, car accidents and slow emergency response times only add to the risks.
But is it true that these dangers also include exploding trees? Not really. Although many people on the Internet are sounding the alarm, there is no serious reason to worry. Naturalists have described similar cases for centuries but almost no one talked about their deadly consequences. At least, they're not nearly as dramatic as they seem verbally.
So, the 18th century Scottish botanist John Claudius London said in his encyclopedia that in the cold winter of 1683, the trunks of oaks, walnuts and other species cracked so much that holes appeared in them. And the appearance of cracks is often accompanied by eerie sounds, similar to gunshots.
Some Native American cultures were so familiar with these phenomena that they were even used to track lunar cycles. For example, the Lakota people called one of the winter months “the moon when the trees crack with cold.”
The tree can actually crack (not explode), just like a water bottle left in the freezer too long will crack. When temperatures drop below a certain threshold, the sap inside some trees begins to harden and expand. If the frost is particularly severe, the outer bark of the tree trunk shrinks faster than the inner bark. The stress sooner or later causes the outer shell to crack, making a loud sound.
Such incidents can cause damage to the tree itself, but this usually does not prevent the tree from growing again when a spring thaw occurs. One way or another, there is no need to be afraid of the tree exploding – the real danger lies in the polar storm.
