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Despite recent viral social media claims, trees do not literally “explode” like bombs in extreme cold.
What happens instead is a natural physical response to rapid and severe temperature drops. When temperatures plunge well below freezing, moisture and sap inside a tree’s wood can freeze.
Water expands as it freezes, which can create stress between the colder, contracting outer bark and the relatively warmer inner wood. That stress can cause the bark or trunk to split suddenly, sometimes making a loud bang or crack that people describe as an explosion.
This rare phenomenon is most accurately called frost cracking or cold splitting and happens during abrupt temperature swings, not continuous cold. It can occur most often in species with higher moisture content or thin bark.
While the noise may be startling, such splits usually do not pose widespread danger to people indoors, though they can injure trees.
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