Many of the cedars in town (looking a lot like a sequoia) are dead or dying
I always thought they looked like Thuja (western red cedar =
Thuja plicata) because of the shape, but didn't know how to identify them via branches, etc. That would make more sense to me - I suppose there must be sequoia distributors out there, but Thuja's are sold in bazillions of "catalog" nurseries all over the U.S., primarily for windbreaks.
In Googling "western red cedar drought dying" there were many articles about drought killing cedar trees/hedges. Here is a typical comment:
"Water Stress: Cedars are relatively shallow-rooted trees. They are susceptible to drought stress especially on well-drained, sandy soils. The extreme of very wet conditions in the fall and winter, followed by a hot, dry summer, is very stressful for the roots. "
I'm off the hill, but for someone who has one here's a link that might be fun to try, I did my best guesses and found Sequoia and western red cedar to be solutions depending on the answers that I gave:
http://www.arborday.org/trees/whattree/index.cfm
