July's tornado and the elm trees on the National Mall

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Back on July 1, a tornado made a path from Arlington County to DC soon. Several trees near the Lincoln Memorial were damaged. Here are some links about that event and the trees.

Capital Weather Gang

Perspective

What it was like inside the D.C. tornado on the National Mall

WTOP traffic reporter Dave Dildine explains how he got caught in the tornado Thursday night and describes what he witnessed

By Dave Dildine
July 6, 2021 at 12:56 p.m. EDT

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Link to tweet

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It was immediately clear that the elm trees had taken an especially hard hit. As I stood beside the elm that was felled just a few feet from the car, I remarked on air to our evening anchor, Dimitri Sotis, that the magnificent tree might have been planted more than a century ago.

According to a National Park Service document, my estimate was not too far off. Most of the elms in this area, it reads, “were subsequently moved to new locations near the Lincoln Circle and Watergate area during their development in the 1920s and 1930s.”

{snip}

Dave Dildine is a traffic reporter for WTOP and previously guided storm-chase tours in the Plains.

[MontanaMama]

1. That looks like rot in those elms.

Large elm trees often succumb to Dutch elm disease…you don’t know it until large hunks come off during a storm. I’ve battled debris from my neighbor’s elm tree for 26 years. FINALLY we had a storm that knocked a huge branch off of their tree so that they could see it was rotten all the way through. The arborist told them they were lucky it didn’t fall on their house or ours. They took the tree out and I am thrilled.