DETROIT (WWJ) – A rumor regarding “exploding trees” has been circulating online, but experts said that is not exactly what happens to trees in cold weather.

Bert Cregg is a professor of horticulture at Michigan State University. He said the term behind “exploding trees” is actually called ice cracking, and it happens to certain trees when the temperatures get well below freezing.

“It sounds like gunshots,” he said. “And if people are in the woods and happen to hear one of these or outside in their yard even, yeah, you’ll be ducking for cover. But it’s not exploding.”

He said the ice cracking is caused when the sap inside some trees freezes.

Cregg said people who are out in the woods do not have to worry about shards of wood flying around if they hear a loud crack.

“I mean, they’ll split open and they’ll open, but this notion that all of a sudden, you know, there’s shards of trees blasting through the woods, that’s not the way it happens,” he said.

Cregg said ice cracking is also not uncommon.

“It’s not unusual going to the woods and seeing trees with frost cracks that have healed over,” he said.

Cregg said trees can continue growing even after suffering a major crack.

“The main threat to the tree would be a point where other, you know, insects, disease, other things can come in,” he said. “But given time, that tree can and does heal these frost cracks over.”

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