OB…. Anyone know what might be causing this issue and how I can fix it?

Water Oaks fall over all the time once they get top heavy or have disease. The answer is cut it down before it falls on your house or car.

I'm guessing disease but is there anyway to treat? Don't think it's top heavy but definitely don't want to risk it falling either.

Dammit. Appreciate the replies

Hypoxlyon canker. She gon'

Think this summarizes it pretty good

https://www.lsuagcenter.com/profiles/lblack/articles/page1597352626934

SGrem said:

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Water oaks live like 40yrs....get MASSIVE....then make a huge giant mess on the ground to cut up and burn for a week. Nothing to do there. They suck.

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Preach. We will be taking down a massive 50-60 year water oak in my backyard and its going to be expensive to remove. It keeps shedding rotted branches with fungal and bore holes in it. You can see the diseased bark on the limbs coming off. And as a sign it's very stressed, it has suckers all over it everywhere.

The tree guy we've used for years has already warned us that even as they plan to rope off the limbs. When theyre cut the tension change may snap them as the rope contact point. I told him I understood. Says it'll be 1.5-2 days to cut and haul off.

I also told him to make sure his climbers are extremely careful.

I had one by my pond blow over a few years ago. To this day it is the largest I have split for firewood, 36". Stinkingest wood (and stringy) I have split.
They don't tolerate fire. We did a controlled burn for yaupon and it killed every water oak within the burn area. Super thin bark.

I've found out the hard way about water oaks and how fragile they are. Purchased a house in 2021. Most of the trees surrounding the house were water oaks and have died in the past 4 years. Knowing their life span is 50 or 60 years explained a lot seeing how the house was about 30 years old and most of those trees were already established.

I've started planting hardier trees that live a lot longer and wish the previous owners would have done the same.

Word of advice. If you have a water oak, go ahead and plant a few replacement oaks around it so you have something to fill the hole and provide some shade when it inevitably dies from drought, root damage, bugs, flood or just looking at it wrong.

New build so nothing special but we planted live oaks, Monterrey oaks, and bur oaks.

The bur oaks won't be that big by the time I'm in diapers but they'll be there for generations to come, hopefully.

Water oaks don't always live long for oaks and can be messy as mature trees but they are very hardy and easy to grow and grow very fast for oak trees. They tolerate weather extremes well. They are evolved for damp conditions where fungus is always a threat to the dead heartwood of adult trees. They are evolved water oak strategy is to grow fast and grow despite the eventual heartwood decay and survive when this eventually drops large limbs. It's something to be aware of and if the trees are cared for as they mature with good trimming, they can mature in a sound way that lasts longer.

If it is 40 + years old cut it down and plant something else. Bunch in our neighborhood and after each storm, foot wide branches fall off. Homeowner can't bear to cut it down so they cut off a few branches after each storm, until it looks like a one limb tree. Cutting it down would have saved money and they would have already had a 10 year old tree in their yard.