How do Swiss beeches respond to extreme drought? To answer this question, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) studied 75 National Forest Inventory (NFI) sample plots during and after the dry summer of 2018. Reduced growth and an abundance of prematurely discolored leaves and thinned crowns provided clear evidence of a loss of vitality in many of the beeches examined. However, most of the trees recovered the following year, when the weather was wetter and less hot.