SevereStudios Storm Chasers

05/15/2026

04/25/2026

Updated tornado threat map for today (SAT.) Strong tornadoes possible in southeast Oklahoma and northeast Texas!

03/10/2026

Strong tornadoes possible today in Illinois, Indiana, and possibly southwest lower Michigan

02/23/2026

Big time snow reports from the Northeast blizzard!

01/21/2026

Some folks have messaged me about the possibility of “exploding trees” with the bitter cold coming in later this week.

I've seen the posts... and this is WAY overly dramatic. Trees don’t actually explode. What we’re talking about here is called frost cracking, also called cold splitting. When temperatures drop fast, especially into the 20 below range or colder, the outside of a tree trunk can shrink quicker than the inside. That stress can cause the trunk to split suddenly, and it can make a loud bang that sounds like a gunshot.

This is most likely to happen on clear, calm nights, especially late night into early morning when temperatures fall quickly. It can happen to a lot of different types of trees, but some common ones around here include maples, ash, apple or crabapple, poplar or cottonwood, and willow, along with younger trees that haven’t yet developed thicker bark.

Will it kill the tree? Most of the time, no. A lot of trees that crack in the winter will still leaf out and turn green in the spring. But the crack can weaken the tree and make it more vulnerable to disease, insects, and rot over time. So it’s something to keep an eye on if you notice a long split in the trunk later this winter.

So yes, there’s something to it. It’s real. But it’s not an “explosion” risk. It’s simply frost cracking during extreme cold.

01/20/2026

Great work from Storm Chaser Jaden Pappenheim leading ABC News World News last night

10/26/2025

Tornado damage captured in Louisiana this morning

10/18/2025

Plane Crash in Michigan