Having lived in the PNW all my life, and worked closely with our friend Doug (the fir trees), this article brings up old mental images of otherwise healthy needles with browned (dead) tips in the crowns.

Coincidence? Probably.

Very cool phenomenon to catch visually.

There is in fact no photograph of treetops glowing.

There is a digital UV-wavelength video of the corona, and a visible-wavelength video of the trees.

The paper [1] contains a sole picture with tiny circles indicating where the UV-video detected corona events, overlaid over a frame of the visible-wavelength video.

The paper does also contain a video [2] which overlays a somewhat processed version of the UV video over the visible wavelength video, where UV photon events are indicated by decaying red dots.

[1] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL11...

[2] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSuppl...

Great time to read about St Elmo's Fire!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elmo's_fire

Storm troopers, but not the kind you'd expect.

I notice the article, the paper, and the "plain language" summary of the paper don't mention the common term for this phenomenon, St Elmo's fire.