The ground is lifting up around my tree — what should I do?

The serious version: soil mounded, humped, or cracked in an arc on one side of the trunk — usually the side opposite the lean — with roots on the lean side pulled upward or a gap opening between trunk and soil. Turf or mulch split in a crescent. It typically shows up within hours or days of a storm or heavy rain, often alongside a lean that was not there before. The benign version looks different: individual surface roots that have raised the lawn gradually and evenly over many years, with no crack, no arc, no lean, and no recent change. When soil lifts in an arc, the root plate is rotating out of the ground. The tree is not settling and it is not adjusting to the wind — anchorage has partly failed and the root mass on the far side is levering the ground upward. This is the one sign on this list that describes a failure already in progress rather than a condition that might eventually cause one. Gradual root-raised turf means the opposite: roots simply growing near the surface, with no loss of anchorage and no hazard.