The leader of my red maple is suddenly almost four feet taller than the rest of the tree. What’s going on?

This isn’t normal, right? I’ve never seen this much disparity in my other trees as they grew. The leader really shot up in the past month or so and, with fall approaching, I know the rest of the tree won’t have time to catch up; should I be worried about its exposure to winter conditions (I live in Colorado) causing it to break or kill the tree? Anything I should do to protect it?

For reference, the tree seems very healthy and was planted three years ago.