This article is a bit of a companion piece to our previous post, “Is My Tree Safe?” which sets the groundwork for understanding that all trees hold inherent risk and cannot be guaranteed as “safe” due to a laundry list of variables.
In this article, we’ll dive into the specifics of how trees surrounding your home can be helpful or hurtful when extreme weather and storms roll through Richmond this summer.
The prediction of an extreme weather event can be pretty scary and is hard to prepare for. Oftentimes, there isn’t much to do other than stock up on clean water and wait it out. When it comes to your trees, there is always a chance of some kind of limb failure when it comes to excessive wind, rain, snow, etc. But that chance becomes much lower when looking at whole tree failure or uprooting — which some peer-reviewed papers estimate happens to only 4% of trees in a storm (click here to read the full paper).
Even though that percentage may be low, my colleagues and I deal with a plethora of painful storm damage situations quite often: downed trees in yards, trees on houses, trees on cars, even trees hung up in other trees. While it may seem like all trees near houses can be dangerous, we often see that the trees directly around your house can act as a barrier and actually block other trees from hitting your home.
I’ve heard from arborists in North Carolina during Hurricane Helene that many homes set in large forest clearings experienced damage from trees falling from nearby wooded areas, since there were no trees to block their path. Just yesterday I looked at a tree that was splitting at the base and in danger of falling on a client’s property — but was luckily propped up by a nearby tree and prevented from causing further damage. In late March, we worked on a large tree that had partially uprooted but was stopped in its tracks by another large tree, halting its path toward the house. We were able to safely get it down without any damage to the client’s home.
This is all to say that having a tree near your house can be beneficial in more ways than we normally think about. They can be guardians of your home — protecting you from other trees, providing shade, increasing property value, improving air quality, and managing excess water from heavy rains. The list goes on! Trees can be great assets to our homes, even in high wind situations. If you do have trees on your property that you’re unsure are friends or foes, I recommend having us come out and take a look to see if we can identify anything of concern.
