#*&$! Ice Storm!

[j_cheney]

So, here's the river birch in front of our house....see that main center trunk---the one snapped in half? (This is, BTW, a 30 foot or so tree. Hard to tell from the pic, but it's actually quite tall)

Here's our desperate attempt to keep more branches from breaking off the saw-tooth oak.

We've already lost a couple of huge branches, displacedtexan estimates that 1/5 of the tree is gone now. We're hoping not to loose much more. On the other hand, the hedge maples and the bald cypress and the pear are doing fine so far. The yaupons are showing a lot of stress, but we've only seen a few snapped branches.

When the wind gets here tomorrow, we're going to be in a lot of trouble.

Comments

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, it's reached 32 here, and things are beginning to melt off. By the time the wind gets here, most of the ice should be melted. We're concenred about internal damage to the trees, (stress hidden by the bark) but won't have the tree guys out until spring. We'll probably have a couple more of these storms between now and then (we had 3 last year) so for now, we'll cut out the dead branches and hope that the next one isn't as bad!