Um this just seems scary:
The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn’t find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.
Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.
But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.
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I know Alan Whittemore, botanist at the U.S. Arboretum, quoted in the Post. His take seems valid.
The wild swings that have been taking place on the various stock markets in the past few months have been going on for much longer in the climate area, however. The extremes of El Niño and La Niña in the Pacific have had a major impact on climate. The heavy rainfall that flooded parts of the midwest last spring were due to the latter type oscillation.
The theory proposed about the weather effects on oak fruit production is quite plausible. It’s unremarkable tho that from year to year acorn production varies dramatically. Some years yield many grocery bags full per suburban plot of mature oaks for the purpose of acorn-throwing battles, but almost none at all in other years.