What does this look like?

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An old lightening strike?

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No
A little history
The tree was elevated when the lot was cleared for the building of the house. The lot was low on the grade so a lot of fill dirt was brought in to raise the grade. The tree quickly declined over the summer and now it is almost completly dead. Some upper limbs have dropped in the wind.
 
the fungal spores are secondary, they didn't kill the tree.

Make sure you probe around the base before climbing. Chances are high for root rot.
 
Looks like construction damage decline followed by Hypoxolon canker. Tree should be removed immediately to sanitize the area of the additional spores. It will not kill otherwise healthy trees but if there are other oaks in the vicinity w/ stress it can move along.
 
Yes hypoxylon yes secondary. yes burying; you could see that from lack of flare in last picture. The sudden removal of those lower branches aggravated the tree's demise. Looks like some sunscald possible above the wounds, lack of food for the tree, more sun on roots makes more stress, etc.
 
Did you see that long sunburn damage in the third photo?

I think that's what that is. Lightning may be similar, but the sun in the image shows to shine on that part of the trunk.

Last week, I showed images to the class I'm teaching from my online album of sunburn.

One picture I took was one maple of about 30 trees in a row - all of them with sunburn damage.

In construction areas, I see the damage run a long way up the trunk sometimes.

Who knows what all else the tree gets after that happens.
 
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