Saturday's storm brought down a huge widow maker!

[Nick Mystic]

Saturday night here in western NC brought the strongest winds I've experienced in the 27 years I've lived here. I'm almost thankful the worst of the wind was during the night hours when I couldn't see the trees swaying outside. We basically live in the middle of a forest with huge trees right outside our windows. It's common during high winds to see the crowns of the trees sway 20 feet and more from side to side.

On Sunday morning when my wife took our dog out for its morning hike she came back said two trees had come down not far behind our house. When I went out to look it turned out just one tree had snapped off about ten feet above the ground and then fell straight down ten feet away so that the top of the tree was sitting nearly straight up with the broken off section impaling the ground. The top section was hung up on a number of nearby trees. Here are a few photos I took this morning:







In this photo you can see the top snagged on an oak tree to the left and a large pine tree to the right.





The tree had appeared healthy, but you can see in these last two photos that there was insect damage in the area where it snapped. What's rather odd is the wood above and below this section is healthy wood. The bad spot was a good ten feet up from the ground!

I'll use a cable and winch to pull the tree from the base where it is sticking in the ground once it warms up outside. I'll probably have to move the base 15 or more feet to create an acute enough angle for the top section to pull out of the trees where it is snagged so that it can fall to the ground. The tree is about 16" in diameter and only about 100 yards behind my house, so it should be pretty easy to haul the rounds back home for processing.

 

[pen]

Good to see you found an upside to the horrible weather.

Sounds like it won't go to waste.

No home damage, and wood for next year, not such a bad day after all!

 

[osagebow]

That's one heckuva "Jart!" Glad no one got hurt.

 

[Ctwilly49]

So weird to see bare Ground!

 

[D8Chumley]

I hear ya on the crowns swaying 20', we got the same thing here. Also have trees all around the house and I don't sleep well when it's that windy. Fortunately we only had small dead branches laying when the sun came up, good that you fared well. That wind is a scary thing, the news the next day showed more than a few trees that fell on houses and cars here locally

 

[Knots]

The wind storms will always tell you which trees have ants in them! The only two that came down during Sandy at my place in CT had ants.

 

[Smoke Signals]

My brother and I cut dead falls and dead trees in a hard maple grove and and see a lot of hard maples with bad spots in trunks with good wood on both sides. Most of the time it appears to be caused by an injury or knot hole that aloud water to pool inside of the log at some point. Some times the hole will have grown over other times not. Is that a locust tree by chance?

 

[MrWhoopee]

Yep, when we have those big blows (last week's was over 40 mph), I drive the 2 miles out to the highway with saw and chains before my wife has to leave for work. There's frequently a blow down blocking the road. Last Friday morning it was a 20 in. diameter Ponderosa completely blocking the road. I had just started on it when some of my neighbors showed up with another saw. Took about 15 minutes to clear a path. More wind on Friday night brought down a black oak that was overhanging the road. I was first on the scene with truck and saw, took out a nice load of good solid wood from the top of the tree, the bottom was badly rotted. Wind makes me both nervous and exited.

 

[Wood Duck]

Red Oak. Primo firewood but it takes a while to season.