OLYMPIA, Wash. — About 84,000 acres of trees were damaged in the heat dome event of late June 2021, and most of those trees are in western Washington.
The information is part of a new report from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The agency says that number could be an undercount.
Called a needle desiccation event, it wasn’t just the hot temperatures, it was exposure to the sun. Temperatures hit 108 at Sea-Tac airport on June 28th. It was the third day in a row above 100 degrees.
In the Cascade foothills, temperatures got even higher. Maple Valley hit 114. The city and the Covington area had one of the higher concentrations of damaged trees as mapped in aerial surveys taken by the DNR.
DNR lists the highest concentrations of damaged trees on the “west side of the Olympic Peninsula, in the Cascade foothills areas of Snohomish, King and Lewis counties, western Pacific County, Wahkiakum County, and southern Clark and Skamania counties."
In its report, the data will be used as part of “ongoing research connecting the [heat dome] event to human-caused climate change.”
Some young trees were killed. More mature trees are expected to recover as the worst damage was concentrated on one side of the tree.
The species most impacted included Douglas-fir, western hemlock, western redcedar and Pacific silver fir.
“Needles appeared brown or red, and in places branch tips and buds were also killed,” read the report. “The long-term impact of needle desiccation is not well studied, and it is assumed that larger well-established and otherwise healthy trees will be able to recover…”