From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for Feb. 6, 1988:
City foresters reported today that many local trees, specifically Bradford pears, were beginning to reveal injury done to them by a cold snap from over a year earlier. In the fall of 1986, before some of the trees had even started changing color, the Lawrence area had experienced several days of harsh weather with temperatures dropping to a low of 2 degrees. The trees had been caught off guard, said forester George Osborne. He explained that trees usually go through a process of hardening the live tissue just below the bark in time for winter's frigid temperatures, but in this case, the cold had killed the tissue, preventing growth last summer and now causing extensive splitting. The damage could be beyond repair, Osborne said, but homeowners would probably have to wait until summer to see if their trees would survive. The Bradford pears had first made their appearance in Lawrence in the late 1960s, and some of the early ones had reached 30 feet in height in some areas.