Protect Your Trees From Weather Disasters

Storm season tree safety tips — Following these tips to reduce changes of tree related disasters during the storm season.

Winter and early spring can be a perilous time for trees. Snow and ice can wreak havoc on branches and roots, and extreme temperatures can also cause stress. While you can’t shelter your trees from all weather disasters, you can follow some easy storm season tree safety tips to protect them—and yourself.

Keep tree limbs pruned

Overgrown limbs can pose a risk to passersby or your property. During the winter months, trees are in their dormant stages of growth—and it’s an ideal time to prune. Locating and removing weak-jointed branches is important to protect both you and your tree. We pay extra attention during pruning to weak, narrow-angled, v-shaped branch crotches, as these are often most susceptible to breakage. Additionally, branches over your house, sidewalk, or car can be cabled or braced for added protection.

Resist the temptation to shake your branches

When winter storms come through, tree branches are often laden with snow. Sometimes, the branches even droop or bend under the snow’s weight. Resist the temptation to shake those branches. Cold and ice can make them brittle, and you could damage them beyond repair. Instead, let nature take its course.

Stay away from branches laden with ice and snow

This one may be common sense but is worth emphasizing—don’t park or walk under branches laden with snow or ice.

Be vigilant about salt use

Areas that receive a lot of snow typically use a lot of salt on roads and sidewalks. The salt can definitely damage your tree. Avoid shoveling a bank of snow around the base of your tree, as the salt in the snow can damage the roots, bark, and other aspects of the tree. If there is a bank of snow around your tree, consider using a gentle watering to wash away some of the snow and salt when the weather permits.

Protect your trees from snowplows

That bank of snow around a tree’s base can also mean it’s harder for snowplows to see where the tree is. As a result, snowplows could hit your tree, causing a wound that’s not evident until spring. Trees planted on parkways and roadsides are most vulnerable.

Take care of breakage right away

If a snow or ice storm comes through, and you notice broken or damaged limbs, call a tree service right away. Broken limbs disrupt a tree’s circulatory system and should be addressed as soon as the weather allows. It’s possible that prompt attention will help prevent further damage to your tree.

If you’ve done all this, and a winter (or early spring) storm comes through and severely damages or downs your tree, you’ll want to act quickly to call for emergency tree removal.

Keep these storm season tree safety tips in mind:

Keep away from damaged trees. You don’t want to walk or park under obviously damaged branches. Keep cars, small children, and pets away from the damaged tree.

Call for service right away. Contend with the situation quickly, as a damaged tree is a liability. Look for a 24/7 emergency tree removal service in your area—at Advanced Tree Care, we pride ourselves on quick response time and serve a two-state, nine-county area.
Hire a licensed, bonded service led by a certified arborist, such as Advanced Tree Care. Tree work can be complex and mistakes are costly, so entrust the job to an expert like us.

Advanced Tree Care combines top-notch equipment, cutting-edge technology, and well-trained staff to provide emergency tree removal and tree maintenance services. With a presence in nine counties and two states, we work daily to provide unparalleled customer service, safety, and efficiency—as well as the expertise to beautify your landscaping and community. Advanced Tree Care isn’t just our name—it’s also our purpose!

The Latest Technology in Tree Care

At Advanced Tree Care, we take our name seriously by staying at the forefront of advances in tools and processes for tree care, pruning, and cutting. We’re committed to using technology as it advances. One of the latest tools we’re using is advanced thermal tree imaging.

Thermal tree imaging uses infrared imaging to assess tree health. It’s a non-invasive method that can clearly distinguish between living and damaged stem tissues in trees. Why might it be important to assess the overall health of trees on public or private property?

Tree care and maintenance are an important part of property management. If you’re a homeowner—or buying a new home—you’ll want to know how healthy your trees are, and if there are signs of damage or disease, you’ll want the best information possible. There are commercial considerations too: village administrations and commercial property owners need to attend to the care, maintenance, and replacement of trees on their properties, too. The reasons for doing so include public safety as well as historic preservation, in some cases.

What is Advanced Thermal Tree Imaging?

Advanced Thermal Tree Imaging takes a non-invasive deep look into the health of your trees to diagnose any issues.

Thermal tree imaging is a highly effective way to determine how healthy those trees are, which ones need dead limbs pruned, and which ones might need to be removed.

Traditionally, inspecting trees to determine health and structural integrity can be time-consuming and invasive. Trees need to be closely inspected. Often, the bark must be disturbed, or our staff has to climb the trees to inspect areas of interest. Invasive testing may be required.

Thermal tree imaging changes all that. The technology gives us both great accuracy and efficiency at once. By taking and examining infrared images, we can distinguish between living and damaged stem tissues in the tree. We can make educated decisions—with clear evidence—about which trees are healthy, and which are diseased or damaged. Together with the property owner, we can make informed decisions about maintenance or removal.

Not only is it non-invasive, thermal tree imaging is also much quicker than other methods of inspection—up to 1,000 times faster at providing the critical information we need. If we’re using thermal tree imaging to appraise the health of trunks and branches, we can inspect dozens of trees in a single day. If we’re inspecting a small, more specific part of a tree—perhaps the trunk only, for decay—that total can be even higher.

So what is it we’re looking for with thermal tree imaging? We’ll tell you. In comparison to other living organisms, trees produce relatively low metabolic energy. Most of what healthy trees emit has already been absorbed by the surrounding environment. On the infrared images, a healthy tree will have relatively even water distribution between its cells and an even heat dissipation over its entire surface.

If a tree is diseased or damaged, the image appears different. The flow of heat energy is interrupted, and cooler areas are apparent in the image. The more cooling there has been internally, the more effect there is on the temperature of the tree’s surface. Once identification of an issue is made, we can proceed with pruning, treatment, or removal.