Severe storms and several tornadoes brought down hundreds of trees last week in Rome and across Central New York. While trees are often a casualty, experts can help identify trees that are at risk of falling before the next big storm.
Leanna Nugent knows a problematic tree when she sees one. She’s a Community Forestry Educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Onondaga County. Nugent passes by one of these higher risk trees every day on Collamer Road near a cemetery.
“So this is a very mature Silver Maple tree. We don't recommend planting Silver Maples because they are very weak wooded," Nugent said. "They're very fast growing, so people like them because you get a big tree pretty fast. But the consequence of that is that you end up with a weak wooded tree that's more likely to come down in a storm.”
Nugent says this particular silver maple is at higher risk.
“Every tree has a central leader, the one main trunk that goes all the way up through the canopy," Nugent explained. "If a tree has two, it actually makes it more risky because there's a weak attachment between the two stems. Especially with this tree, you can see that they're growing really close together, and so there's not a lot of bark included in that union, which makes the Union much weaker.”
Nugent says there are other factors in assessing risk and determining if a tree should be removed. In most cases, she says, it’s a last resort, including here near a busy road.
"We look a lot at what we call targets which are people, property, activities that can be disrupted," Nugent said.
“We think about the occupancy rate of our targets, how often is a car actually under this area of concern. There's not often a target underneath it. There are other a lot of other things you can do before you go towards removal. In this case, we could even just prune some of this off to reduce the load.”
Nugent says most trees generally pose little risk.
“Trees provide us with so many benefits that we want to make sure that we can still enjoy those benefits and figure out what level of risk we're willing to tolerate," Nugent said. "It's pretty rare that serious damage or destruction or severe consequences are caused by trees."
She says a certified arborist can provide an accurate risk assessment. Most larger tree care companies have a certified arborist on staff.
