a couple weeks of low rainfall will not affect large trees, not immediately (yer strawberries might be hurtin' tho).

It's several years' worth of drought (like we've had in the Northeast) that starts to make its effects known in larger trees years later...they become vulnerable to storm damage and generally weakened and so more susceptible to illness, rot, insects etc.

There is indeed a virus affecting some of the old evergreens in the Northeast; wonder if it's the same as the one mentioned in Kansas?