How To Take Care Of A Tree Hit By Lightning

The recent forest fires plaguing other countries provide a real lesson on the significance of how to take care of a tree hit by lightning. Spring and summer include days of thunderstorms that raises the regularity of destructive strikes. When thunderclouds roam, and conditions are dry, lightning can change trees into fuel, which creates horrific forest fires.

Trees react to lightning just like a human being which is cooking on the inside and having a scar on the surface. With trees, sap cooks along the strike path, producing internal pressure via steam evaporation, tearing the tree apart from the inside out.
 
When Lightning Strikes

Before determining a course of action, you want to wait inside until the danger of more electric discharges is over. Don’t believe that saying that lightning never strikes the same place twice. Leaving your office or home in the middle of a storm makes you a target for getting hit by lightning.

Typically, a lightning strike leaves an apparent physical trace, regardless of the tree is split in half or the bark of the tree is burned. There are times the destruction ends up showing itself as a piece of bark that has been ripped away without any other apparent reason. If you believe your tree has been hit by lightning, stay away until the risk is gone before doing a tree inspection for damage. You can also contact a tree contractor to do a comprehensive, professional tree inspection as well.

Choosing a Course of Action

Trees can survive much worse than what humans and nature put them through. Though, if your tree has been permanent damage due to a lightning strike, it's critical to decide the best course of action to take to fix the situation.

Damaged limbs and stripped bark aren’t big problems. But, if the damage seems pretty bad, it's crucial to make sure you don’t have a dying tree. Dying, dead trees need to be gone from your property, particularly if right next to trees that are alive and healthy. Dead trees function as kindling that can light a forest fire and even work as a host to spread illness like mountain pine beetle, which favors old growth pines and are able of unfolding destruction.​