You’re seeing more fallen trees, branches in Whatcom. It wasn’t the windstorm

John Tuxill, an ethnobotanist and associate professor at Western Washington University’s Fairhaven College, said local trees struggled to survive the early summer heatwave that sent temperatures soaring above 100 degrees. “Part of what we’re seeing now is the aftermath of that heat dome at the end of June,” Tuxill told The Herald. “It’s the first time that I recall a big dieback in the Pacific Northwest relative to a specific event.”