During Friday’s episode of The Paul Allen Show on Twin Cities radio station KFAN, Allen, Chad Greenway, and Alec Lewis opened the show discussing the intense cold weather in the region. One person mentioned the recent story about a Los Angeles Rams player putting cayenne in his socks to stay warm, and Allen mentioned the urban legend about trees “exploding” from cold weather.
Umprompted, Allen then interjected by asking, “In conditions like this, do paid protesters get hazard pay? Those are the things that I’ve been thinking about this morning.”
A few minutes later, the conversation switched to football, and Allen once again worked a paid-protester reference into a discussion about NFL coaching hires.
“Everybody’s catching strays this week. [Brian] Flores, Kevin Stefanski from Baker [Mayfield], Charlie ‘Biyatch’ caught one out of nowhere. They’re just all over, paid protesters caught one this morning,” he said, referencing his earlier comments.


Trees exploding in the cold isn’t an urban myth. I’ve heard it, and seen the aftermath. It’s gotta be really cold. Like -40 cold, but ya fact, not myth.
Also fuck this guy and his paid protester narrative. I’m so over fascism. Shit it is just getting tedious…
I think the urban myth part was some of the photos being shared that showed very dramatic results. There was one right here on lemmy that someone posted from the wikipedia page on exploding trees without bothering to read its caption - it that had been destroyed by a lightning strike.
Yes, exploding trees are real. The sap in them freezing is what causes them to explode, although maybe the confusion is that people expect a fireball or smoke when something explodes? I don’t know, but I’ve seen a lot of people saying it’s an urban legend even though it’s real.
Also, yes, fuck this guy. If we were getting paid, we’d be filthy rich.
When it gets real cold the trees make like popping and cracking noises. But we don’t get -40 below here, got to -25 just a few days back though. Anything below 0 I hear the noises occasionally from the trees.