Is the side of my tree facing the road is brown and dying an emergency?
Within weeks. Two separate injuries share one name. Spray damage is direct chemical burn: salty slush lands on twigs, buds, and evergreen foliage and desiccates the tissue, killing it outright on the exposed face. Soil damage is systemic: chloride is taken up and accumulates in leaves to toxic levels, while sodium displaces calcium and magnesium on clay particles and collapses soil structure, so the soil holds water the roots can no longer extract. The tree ends up drought-stressed in wet soil and poisoned at the same time. The soil version is the one that kills trees; the spray version disfigures and causes dieback.
What changes while you wait
Seasonal and cumulative, not sudden — no one gets hurt by salt damage. Injury happens all winter and shows in April and May, each winter stacking on the last, and it is typically the third or fourth salted winter, or the first summer drought layered on salted soil, when a street tree crosses from ugly to dying. The action window is narrow and specific: leaching has to happen in early spring, before the tree is fully leafed out and while the salt is still high enough in the profile to move. Miss it and the tree carries the load all summer. Meanwhile sodium keeps degrading soil structure, the crown thins from the tips inward, and borers and cankers find the stressed tree.
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