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BOB KELLEHER: The picture is as familiar as the old Hamm's Beer commercials. Clear blue island-studded lakes surrounded by lush stands of tall white and red pine trees, generously spiked with white aspen. But picture instead stunning red maples and burly oaks. That may be the future for at least parts of the Boundary Waters.

The July 4th, 1999 storm was not what you would expect in cool Northeastern Minnesota. It was huge, fueled with energy generated by the mix of humidity and hot weather. At the National Weather Service office in Duluth, head meteorologist Michael Stewart says he has seen lots of severe weather, but the July 4th storm was extraordinary.

MICHAEL STEWART: It was one of the bigger storms, more ferocious storms I've ever seen in my weather service career. And this storm already had a history of 90 to 100 mile an hour winds. And so we knew that this was going to be bad.

BOB KELLEHER: It was very bad. Century-old pine trees snapped in the storm. Some 400,000 acres of trees simply flattened. Was the storm a harbinger of global warming, or according to Stewart, was it a rather extreme manifestation of normal weather?

MICHAEL STEWART: Winters from five and six years ago, we had record snows and record cold. The winters we've had in the last four years have been reasonably mild. This winter, we basically, we lost our snowpack in January, which is unheard of in the northland. The weather varies.

BOB KELLEHER: But what's growing back raises questions. The University of Minnesota's Lee Frelich is surprised how quickly trees and brush have emerged. He's a forestry expert based in the Twin Cities who's been monitoring regrowth across the blowdown. Some saplings are springing a foot or more each season, and many saplings are hardwoods.

LEE FRELICH: There's a lot more red maple there than we would have thought that was in the understory. Now red maple is near the northern edge of its range right there, and we really didn't expect to have that much red maple, especially in the eastern end of the Boundary Waters over on the Gunflint Trail.

BOB KELLEHER: Bur oak seedlings can be found all over the forest floor in what had been a 300-year-old red and white pine forest. Both the oak and maples are common to the south, like in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

LEE FRELICH: It probably indicates that the climate is a little warmer because red maple will freeze in the winter and the trunk will crack if it gets very, very cold. And if you look at the temperature data, you see that for far Northern Minnesota, it's mainly the winter temperatures that are much warmer than they were a few decades ago.

BOB KELLEHER: The 1999 storm was the fourth regional blowdown in recent years. Frelich wonders about global warming.

LEE FRELICH: There is a hypothesis that these big blowdowns in the northern forests are a result of global warming, that previously, they occurred down on the prairies in Kansas and Iowa, and now they're occurring further north.

BOB KELLEHER: But more research is needed.

LEE FRELICH: We'll have to wait and see. Get a little more data and see if it's just a fluctuation in the frequency of these severe storms or whether it's a long term trend.

BOB KELLEHER: Another surprise is the spread of dogwood throughout the blowdown. The leafy brush was thought a wetland species. Its shade retains moisture, which speeds the rot of damaged timber. Still, the danger of catastrophic fire remains very high, especially if the area suffers a prolonged dry spell. Kris Reichenbach works at the US Forest Service Office in Duluth. She says Boundary Waters visitors should expect strict camp fire restrictions again this summer.

KRIS REICHENBACH: At this time of year, it maybe doesn't seem very likely, but it may not take very much for a fire to get started and to please be careful.

BOB KELLEHER: Outdoor burning restrictions are now in place across Minnesota. They'll remain in place until Green Up, which in Northern Minnesota may be several weeks away. In Duluth, I'm Bob Kelleher, Minnesota Public Radio.