It must have made a sound… Right?
Sometime overnight that limb on the ground broke away from the oak you see to the right. When I stepped it off, the length of the limb on the ground was 55 – 60′. As you can see, the lower portion of this limb was half-way up the trunk.
My oaks have been weakened by drought, now overgrown because of the wet year, unable to support their own weight. We had no strong winds, no hard rain, nothing obvious to bring this branch to the ground last night.
To put things in perspective, just to the left of the trunk is a Toyota sedan.
Almost 2′ in diameter at the base… A massive amount of timber on the ground considering the tree is still standing.
And the thing that really amazes me… Just four short years ago, I would have been sleeping under the limb above. This branch would have taken out our kitchen and part of the master bedroom…The lessons of Ike learned and acted on.
Now to get someone to come and cut up and haul away all of this firewood.
We have just lost a similar limb off a beech tree, the second in a week.
Mine fell on public land, belonging to English Heritage; we had no choice, we had to pay somebody to remove it very quickly.
I hate to lose an old and venerable tree, don’t you?
Just had the limb removed yesterday and while they were at it I had them clean up the rest of our trees. Pushing the canopies up really opened up the yard.