John Seiler was strolling across Virginia Tech’s campus with his students Thursday morning when something stopped them in their tracks: a sweet cherry tree with an unusual jagged scar running along its trunk.
Seiler, a professor and tree physiology specialist at the university, knew immediately that the scar was the aftermath of what social media has dubbed a “tree explosion.”
The tree “had broken open in the cold,” he said.
As more than half of the United States braces for a powerful winter storm, some meteorologists on social media are warning that these “exploding trees” are possible.
But while heavy snow, ice and bitter cold can…