Maybe … but we’ve had heavily rained and clouded over seasons in the past and it didn’t cause this. It’s a weird summer and if you saw the forest across hundreds of miles of highway look the way it is now and compared it to previous years … it doesn’t take a forester to know that something is wrong.

My opinion is that it is a combination of a warm winter, little snow, early spring, warmer weather. Plus some strange insect or worm infestation is killing thousands of trees everywhere (and scientists do note that warmer weather that lasts longer and starts earlier are good for infestations). Give those conditions just a bit of moderate summer heat and it dries out the forest fast. Which is why I worry, July and August are still liable to give us a few heat waves. The combination of the forest being on the edge of being too dry and the prospect of more hot weather coming is not looking good.

I hope I’m wrong … but it doesn’t look good.