Extensive oak decline and death along the South Carolina coast in 1981 was apparently aggravated by 2 severe summer droughts, the first in 1978, which resulted in only scattered incidences of decline and death, and another in 1980, which caused eventual rapid decline and death of thousands of urban and forest trees in spring of 1981. A lowered soil water table is blamed as the cause of injury to the shallow-rooted red oak species most affected. These included willow oak (Quercus phellos), laurel oak (Q. laurifolia), water oak (Q. nigra), and southern red oak (Q. falcata). Hypoxylon atropunctatum was an evident early colonizer of both the declined and the dead trees.