#weather damage

[onlytiktoks]

[fubbypeets]

I got a new phone last weekend (new to me, it was my mom's because she got a new phone), so I finally have a Google Pixel again!!! I'm so happy! I haven't done a proper photoshoot with it yet, so I decided to do one with Zenith! Also, context for the uprooted tree and the thin trees you can see bending in the back of the last picture! I was affected by the April 2nd severe weather outbreak. Not too bad thankfully, but 90mph winds came through and bent those thin trees and completely uprooted a healthy hardwood tree in the backyard. My dad had to get a new chainsaw to cut it because it's just so big. The bottom of the tree with all the roots and everything is probably 8 feet wide!

[pcttrailsidereader]

Hurricane Helene and the Appalachian Trail

This is an excerpt from a recent NY Times article by Victor Mather. Although the PCT is not so vulnerable as the AT to the ravages of hurricanes, weather extremes can easily have an outsized impact on miles of the ribbon of trail that connects Mexico and Canada. This article serves as a grim reminder about just how fragile these National Scenic Trails are.

As the scope of devastation caused by Hurricane Helene comes into focus, an American landmark that dozens of towns benefit from is facing historic destruction: the Appalachian Trail.

The 2,200-mile trail along the East Coast and the Southeast attracts millions of hikers each year, and brings an economic boost to a host of towns along the route. But last week Hurricane Helene became the most destructive natural disaster the century-old trail had seen, uprooting trees, destroying bridges and washing away rock steps, making large portions impassable, according to the conservancy that manages it.

Damage from flooding, strong winds and tornadoes was present in many of the 14 states the route touches, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy said.

“The scope and scale is historic,” Sandi Marra, the conservancy president, said of the damage. Although it was not yet possible to T

The conservancy plans to assess the damage and prioritize the hardest-hit areas, Ms. Marra said, but the timeline for clearing and rebuilding the trail will not be quick.

“I cannot imagine it will be normal in 2025,” she said.

Some parts of the trail may need to be rerouted, forcing hikers onto roads, she said. Trailhead parking lots may have been washed away, and both small bridges for hikers and highway bridges used to get to the trail may be gone.

The conservancy’s website notes that many of the towns are also encouraging visitors not to come so they can prioritize recovery.

Throughout the region, the hurricane sent water and mud down from mountains. As a result of the deluge, some small towns have been virtually cut off from the outside world.

Some of the places where hikers stay, eat and form communities, can typically expect economic growth and a boost in tourism, the conservancy said.

“Nobody can hike the Appalachian Trail without these communities,” said Gary Sizer, who hiked the trail in 2014 and wrote the book “Where’s the Next Shelter?” about the trip. “The whole experience is a series of three-to-five day backpacking trips. You get to a town, you meet some people. Hikers form a community.”

The conservancy is advising hikers to stay off the trail in some areas. National forests through which the trail passes in North Carolina, Tennessee and southwest Virginia are closed.

Beyond the forests, the conservancy also urged hikers to postpone their trips through a southern stretch between Georgia and Rockfish Gap, Va. That’s more than 800 miles of the trail.

“People will say they’re not officially closed, and that’s true,” Ms. Marra said of the network of trails. But the storm has made parts of the path “precarious and dangerous,” according to Janet Hensley, who follows and helps hikers from a van every year and is known to many of them as Miss Janet.

“On the trail, you may spend half of a day getting through a cluster of trees blocking the path,” Ms. Hensley said of the damage.

For any damage to the trail, there is greater concern about the nearby communities. Ms. Marra cited Damascus, Va.; Hot Springs, N.C., and Erwin, Tenn., as among the hardest-hit places near the trail.

“You have people who are literally struggling for water and food,” Ms. Marra said of the residents around the trail. She suggested hikers travel to places where they would not put pressure on services. “Why strain a system that is already broken?”

For decades, the Appalachian Trail has had a special hold on hikers, with many attempting, and the most intrepid succeeding, in traversing the whole thing.

“It’s a very diverse trail,” Mr. Sizer said, explaining its popularity. “In Georgia, it’s lush and humid with rolling hills, somewhat easy going. North Carolina, that’s your first experience above tree line. By the time you get up North, you’re literally climbing hand over hand, you’re not just hiking.”

Still, the trail and surrounding communities are normally a happy and welcoming environment for enthusiasts like Ms. Hensley. She has become a well-known sight on the trail for 15 years, driving her sticker-covered van with its large smiley face on the roof to bring water, food and replacement equipment to hikers. During a phone interview, she was interrupted for a selfie.

“When they see the van, it makes them happy,” she said.

But the smiles for hikers and the trail community are muted now. “It’s just heartbreaking,” she said.

[rjzimmerman]

As Disasters Multiply, Billions in Recovery Funds Go Unspent

The slow pace of government aid has left Americans more vulnerable to Hurricane Dorian and other storms. Climate change is making the problem worse.

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

The Trump administration is sitting on tens of billions of dollars in unspent recovery money meant to help Americans recover from disasters, leaving people less able to rebound from the effects of Hurricane Dorian and other storms.

As of June 30, the government had spent less than one-third of the $107 billion provided by Congress following the hurricanes and wildfires of 2017 and 2018, federal data show. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which received $37 billion — more than any other agency — had spent less than $75 million.

That money is meant to help cities and states rebuild after a disaster. It is often used to fix roads, drainage systems and other infrastructure, or to repair or elevate houses in low-lying, vulnerable areas.

The funds are being held up partly by laws designed in an earlier age of fewer and less severe disasters. In addition, states and cities already reeling from earlier floods or fires often struggle to meet the federal bureaucratic requirements. As climate change amplifies the disaster risk, the logjam threatens to worsen, with increasingly dire consequences.

The bulk of the money comes from just two federal offices: the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which helps communities recover from disasters by funding everything from clearing debris to rebuilding hospitals, and HUD, which helps repair homes, infrastructure and businesses.

The sluggish spending joins a long list of headaches for federal officials trying to protect Americans against climate change. Among them: The shrinking number of people with flood insurancecompared with a decade ago; the growing number of homes being built in floodplains; the refusal of many states to impose mandatory, up-to-date building codes; and the emphasis on rebuilding in the same place, rather than somewhere safer.

[rjzimmerman]

Interesting. The Cambridge University report informs us that supply chain disruption as a consequence of extreme weather events attributable to a changing climate could cost the global economy $61 billion a year. Think of the current coronavirus effect on the supply chain: a huge decrease in global financial markets. So, the coronavirus story should be a serious warning to the policy planners as they consider climate change.

Excerpt from this story from Reuters:

Climate change could add around $100 billion, or more than 20%, to the global cost of extreme weather events such as floods, heatwaves and droughts by 2040, research from Cambridge University showed on Wednesday.

The findings come from the university’s Climate Change Business Risk Index, which uses climate modeling data to quantify extreme weather event risks and their potential to disrupt business operations and supply chains globally.

Average direct costs of around $195 billion a year could rise to $234 billion by 2040, the report said, an increase of $39 billion a year at today’s values, with the remainder taken up by indirect costs such as those from supply chain disruption.

[iconictreecare]

How Weather Affects Tree Health Near Copley Hospital in Morrisville, VT?

Weather affects tree health near Copley Hospital mainly through three forces: heavy wet snow that breaks limbs, freeze-thaw cycles that crack bark and stress roots, and sudden ice storms that snap weak branches over roads and driveways. The trees along Washington Highway and the Randolph Road corridor face all three most winters, and the damage often shows up months later, not right away.

I am Michael Thompson, owner of Iconic Tree Care. I have spent years climbing, cutting, and assessing trees across Lamoille County, and the properties near Copley Hospital come up often in that work.

Why Weather Hits Trees So Hard in This Part of Lamoille County?

Morrisville sits in a spot where cold air settles into the valley and temperatures swing hard between day and night, especially in early spring and late fall. That swing is the real problem, more than any single storm.

A tree can handle a cold snap fine. What it struggles with is thawing during the day and refreezing overnight, over and over, for weeks at a time.

That cycle expands and contracts water inside bark and small branches. Over a few seasons, it opens cracks that insects and decay fungi use as an entry point.

What Happens to Trees During a Freeze-Thaw Cycle?

A freeze-thaw cycle is simply a stretch of weather where temperatures rise above freezing during the day and drop back below it at night. Vermont winters run through dozens of these cycles some years.

Each cycle causes tiny movement inside the wood. Sugar maple and red maple, the two species most common near the hospital, are particularly prone to a defect called frost cracking, where a vertical seam opens along the trunk.

Most frost cracks do not kill a tree outright. But they weaken the trunk at that point, and a tree with an old frost crack is far more likely to fail in a windstorm years later.

Heavy Snow Load and Why Certain Trees Near the Hospital Are More Exposed?

Snow load is the weight sitting on branches after a storm, and it becomes dangerous when snow falls wet and heavy rather than light and powdery. Vermont gets both kinds, sometimes in the same week.

White pine holds a huge amount of snow in its dense needle structure, which is part of why it looks so full in winter and also why its limbs snap so often. White birch bends under snow weight and sometimes never straightens back out, leaving a permanent lean.

Last winter, after a heavy wet snowfall, I was called to a property along the Randolph Road corridor where three large white pine limbs had come down across a driveway overnight. The homeowner had no idea the tree was carrying that much weight until the branches gave way.

Does Ice Storm Damage Show Up Immediately or Later?

Ice storm damage sometimes shows up right away as snapped branches, but a lot of the real damage is delayed. A limb can survive an ice storm bent and cracked, then fail on a calm day months later once decay sets in.

Vermont's forests have dealt with major ice events before, including the 1998 ice storm that caused widespread damage across the state. Research following that storm found something homeowners often do not expect: most injured hardwood trees actually survive ice damage, and species like sugar maple and red maple typically recover their growth over time, provided the crown damage was not too severe.

That does not mean ice damage is harmless. It means the danger period stretches out longer than most people assume, sometimes years, as internal decay slowly spreads from the original wound.

How Wind Interacts With Already Weakened Trees?

Wind rarely causes damage on its own near Copley Hospital. It is almost always wind acting on a tree that weather already weakened through frost cracking, root stress, or old storm wounds.

A tree with a healthy root system and solid trunk structure can handle strong gusts without issue. A tree that has been through a few freeze-thaw winters with an unaddressed crack is a different story entirely.

This is why a lean that seems minor after one storm can become a real hazard after the next one. The damage compounds instead of resetting each season.

What This Means for Properties Near Washington Highway?

The neighborhoods along Washington Highway and the Randolph Road corridor share a common mix of sugar maple, white birch, red oak, and white pine. These trees line driveways, shade yards, and sit close enough to homes, parking areas, and walkways that a failure is not just a landscaping problem.

A dead limb hanging over a parking area near a medical facility, or a leaning tree along a walkway that patients and visitors use, is a liability that tends to get worse with each passing storm season. Catching a stressed or cracked tree early is far cheaper and safer than waiting for it to fail.

Homeowners in Lamoille County who want a closer look at what this kind of assessment involves can learn more.

What to Watch For After a Storm?

A short checklist helps here, since most homeowners are not sure what counts as urgent versus what can wait.

A vertical crack or split bark on the trunk, especially one that opens wider after a freeze

Branches that bend but do not spring back after snow melts

A visible lean that was not there before the last storm

Bark that has pulled away from the trunk in a strip

Dead or brittle branches concentrated on one side of the tree

Any one of these on its own is worth a look. Two or more together usually means it is time to have someone assess the tree in person rather than wait.

Why Some Trees Recover and Others Do Not?

The difference usually comes down to how much of the crown, the branch and leaf structure at the top of the tree, was lost or damaged. A tree that lost a quarter of its crown in a storm has a reasonable chance of full recovery over a few growing seasons.

A tree that lost half its crown or suffered a split trunk is in a different category. Even if it survives, it often becomes structurally unreliable, and the risk of a delayed failure years later goes up significantly.

Species matters too. Sugar maple tends to compartmentalize storm wounds well, sealing off damaged wood so decay does not spread as fast, while white pine and white birch are generally less forgiving after a serious break.

A Straight Answer on Whether a Tree Needs Removal After Weather Damage

Not every storm-damaged tree needs to come down. Most survive minor to moderate damage, especially hardwoods like sugar maple and red maple, which is worth remembering before assuming the worst.

Removal becomes the right call when the trunk itself is split, when more than half the crown is gone, when the tree is leaning toward a structure or walkway, or when there is visible decay at the base combined with any of the above. Short of that, pruning out the damaged wood and monitoring the tree over the next couple of growing seasons is usually enough.

How to Tell If a Tree Company Actually Knows What They're Looking At?

This comes up more than people expect. A tree crew that only talks about removal, without explaining what they are seeing in the wood or bark, is worth a second opinion.

A trustworthy assessment includes specifics: where the crack is, how deep the lean has progressed, whether the root flare shows any heaving or soil cracking. If someone cannot point to what they are actually seeing, they are guessing.

Iconic Tree Care is based in Morristown, Vermont, and our crews work with professional-grade equipment suited to Vermont conditions, from tight lots near the hospital to larger wooded parcels further out. We factor in freeze-thaw cycles and snow load as part of every assessment, not as an afterthought.

Property owners near Copley Hospital who want to see recent work and reviews can see here.

The Cosmetic Versus Dangerous Line

A lot of storm damage looks worse than it is. A few broken small branches, some torn leaves, or minor bark scraping is cosmetic and heals on its own.

The line moves to dangerous when the trunk's structural integrity is in question, when a large limb over a walkway or parking area is cracked but still attached, or when a tree's lean has visibly increased since the last time someone looked at it. Those situations do not resolve with time. They get assessed and addressed, or they get worse.

A Closing Thought

Trees near Copley Hospital have weathered plenty of Vermont winters already, and most of them are more resilient than people assume. What changes the odds is whether someone catches the small signs, a crack, a lean, a dead limb, before the next storm turns a minor issue into a bigger one. Weather will keep testing these trees every season. Paying attention is what keeps that testing from turning into an emergency.

FAQ

Does a tree need to be removed after every ice storm? No. Most trees, especially sugar maple and red maple, survive ice damage and recover over a few growing seasons unless the trunk itself is split or the crown loss is severe.

How long after a storm can damage still show up? Delayed damage can appear months or even years later, as decay slowly spreads from an old wound or crack that was not addressed at the time.

Which trees near Morrisville are most vulnerable to snow load? White pine and white birch tend to carry the most snow weight and bend or break more easily than sugar maple or red oak.

Is a leaning tree always an emergency? Not always, but any lean that has visibly worsened since the last storm, or that points toward a structure or walkway, should be assessed in person rather than watched from a distance.

What is a frost crack, and is it serious? A frost crack is a vertical split in the bark and outer wood caused by repeated freezing and thawing. It rarely kills a tree immediately, but it weakens the trunk and raises the risk of failure in future storms.

Iconic Tree Care 5315 Randolph Rd, Morristown Vermont 05661 802-338-0802 https://iconictreecare.com/

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

[the-re-farmer]

I just had to...

… share this video from Quick Dick McDick in Saskatchewan. Where he is hasn’t even been the worst hit. Wow. The Re-Farmer

View On WordPress

[epitome-the-burnkid-viii]

🎱 #youtuberecommendedchronicles🔮 🧩🔑🪄Part infotainment, part D.I.Y. intuitive social media mystery school! Fortified with art, philosophy, memes, music, movies & more for your scrolling/streaming pleasure. 📺 Find my podcasts Supplemental Broadcast, Pan-Panen Pious Prophetic Ponderings, and Bleepz 'N Bloopz & The Oontz Oontz Oontz on 473x4ndr14 (available on YouTube, Odysee, Rumble & Twitch)🎙️ Original music available on C0P3RN1CAN R3C0RD5 via SoundCloud. Look for The C0P3RN1CAN Dispatch across all major music platforms!!!📻 Serving many collectives including: Chosen Ones, 144K Light workers, Grid workers, The Great Resist, The Great Awakening, The Great Taking, The Great Remembrance, and the Truth, Freedom, & Sovereignty movements. An OK, Copernicus Production. PLUR & art hard!😱🙏🧿🫶🏼👽👹👼🏼🎪🤹🏽‍♀️🤡🔥🎯🎲🎰🎟️