I have the same issue here in Upper Michigan. We had an extremely wet summer and fall and I noticed that many of my 1 and 2 year old trees still had leaves on them halfway thru winter. Didn't think too much about it this spring, but many of those trees did not leaf out on time and a about half of those trees looked completely dead. Knew it wasn't the cold winter, it was relatively mild here with a low of only -19F, usually gets to at least -25F or colder a few night every winter. We had plenty of snow cover also. I don't recall having real mild weather and then it getting really cold like Michael, but that could have been the case? I just remember it being very wet here all summer and fall.
Almost all of the trees that I thought were dead have resprouted about 12-16" above ground and the new growth is vigorous, but a 2 year old branched tree is now a one year old whip....again . I noticed that the bark on the trunks and lower limbs looked kind of orange-brown in color instead of the normal dark green/brown. Many of the 2 year old trees eventually leafed out but have weak growth and just look sickly, although some are starting to look better. I'm just wondering now if the tissues underneath have been damaged to the point where the tree will eventually die anyway?
The funny thing for me is that I have very sandy soil here and drains extremely well, so I'm not sure if the trees just simply retained too much water? Not sure that is even possible, but it sounds basically the same as what Michael and Claude observed.
I have several 4-6 year old trees and they seemed a little slow to get going this spring but look pretty good now. However, many of those trees were loaded with fruit buds and out of about 35 trees, I don't remember seeing any blossoms this spring and I've found only 1 apple out of all of them. So I believe they were affected too. A few varieties that seem to be unfazed by whatever was going on were Mantet, Arlet, Snowsweet, Honeycrisp, Sweet 16, Zestar, Akero, Brock, and a few others. But for the most part the tree damage was done only to trees less than 3 years old. And the smaller the tree the more damage it seemed to sustain.
Pat
Brampton Lake Orchards
Zone 4a Upper Michigan
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/24/2018 10:11PM by Pat Pryal.