Are Lightning Strikes Worse On Softwood Trees Than Hardwood Trees

Well most trees aren t 200 feet often 300 feet tall and 25 feet wide.

Are lightning strikes worse on softwood trees than hardwood trees.

They re fried down to the roots and don t recover. When lightning strikes a tree you usually have to take a wait and see approach. For the trees that live for a few years you can run into the problem of the lightning scars and loss of bark making the tree more exposed to insects and diseases. Hardness can be said to be a function of the wood s density and hardwood trees are generally denser than softwood trees.

The redwoods have considerably more heft and though will suffer some damage rarely will die completely. Once the lightning strikes the electricity will be diverted to the cable. Tree damage from a lightning strike. When lightning strikes the sap in the bark of the tree is subject to extreme temperatures many times hotter than the surface of the sun due to electrical resistance.

Some trees die immediately from the damage while other trees will live for a number of years. The spark of death. Lightning damage in trees. Conifer wood contains only a few different cell types.

Hardwood information specifies that hardwood trees are deciduous. This means that the leaves fall off in autumn and the tree remains leafless through springtime. Also known as gymnosperm trees softwood trees are defined by their ability to produce seed bearing cones or fruit which they drop to reproduce. The wood of hardwood trees has more cell types and less air spaces.

That s why some trees violently explode when struck by lightning. Tree protection against lightning strikes. Classifying wood as either a hardwood or softwood comes down to its physical structure and makeup and so it is overly simple to think of hardwoods as being hard and durable compared to soft and workable softwoods. Unlike hardwood trees softwood trees generally don t shed their leaves once a year.

A few simple tests help you differentiate hardwood from softwood trees. Now what s interesting about this is that most trees do not survive lightning strikes. Although sometimes old needles. Furthermore softwood trees don t enter a state of dormancy during the winter like hardwood trees.

When lightning hits a tree it steams water inside the tree busts bark from the trunk and branches and can even split a tree open in extreme cases. In order to prevent lightning from harming your trees you may consider installing a lightning protection system that uses copper cables attached to the tree s uppermost branches and grounded a few meters away from the tree. The electrical resistance causes the sap to be heated into steam which can make it explode. Qualified arborists can recommend the installation of lightning protection systems where appropriate or the proper course of action if a tree has been struck by lightning.