Freezing temperatures will zap your car battery — and these invasive beetles

Joe Sneve | Argus Leader

Show Caption Hide Caption Arctic blasts sub-zero freeze towards U.S. upper Midwest, Northeast A blast of super-cold arctic air is bringing dangerous sub-zero cold to the U.S. Midwest and Northeast

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – The extreme cold that's putting lives at risk across the country isn't just a human problem.

The sub-zero temperatures and wind chills that could dip as low as 50-below zero could also wipe out a majority of the Emerald Ash Borer larvae living in Sioux Falls trees.

The invasive beetle has killed an estimated 100 million ash trees in the United States since it was discovered in 2002 in Michigan.

John Ball, a forest health specialist with the South Dakota Department of Agriculture, said Tuesday that the weather conditions gripping much of the northern plains this week are expected to kill up to 80 percent of the Emerald Ash Borer population before the cold snap ends.

"The good news is when it hits minus 20 for a while — for hours at night — we could kill 80 percent of them," he said. "That’s not a small number."

Ball said if the temperatures drop to -35 degrees, nearly all of those larvae could be killed, as well as most car batteries, he joked.

That doesn't mean Sioux Falls and South Dakota won't continue to have an Emerald Ash Borer infestation to deal with, however. The heartiest of the creatures will survive the cold, especially those that are burrowed deep within a tree or low enough in a tree to be protected by snow. Thick bark provides about 5 degrees of insulation, and snow that covers trees has a similar effect.

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But the rate at which the infestation spreads will be slowed, Ball said.

"We'll kill off the ones that are the 'Miami' beetles and we will still have the 'Greenland' beetles to deal with," he said. "The ones that survive, their young will be a little heartier."

The city of Sioux Falls this week began cutting down ash trees in public right-of-ways as a means to slow the spread of the infestation. And Ball said that's still a prudent way to manage the emerald ash borer problem in the city, regardless of how low temperatures dip this week.

"It doesn't eliminate the inevitability of it," he said.

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Contributing: William Westhoven, Morristown Daily Record

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