What Arborists Say Every Homeowner Should Check Before the Wind Picks Up

With severe weather season settling over Mercer County, arborists across the Delaware Valley have a warning for homeowners under the region’s heavy tree canopy: the tree most likely to come down in the next storm is probably one that looks perfectly healthy today.

The mature trees that shade older Trenton neighborhoods, line the streets of Hamilton and Ewing, and fill the county’s parks are part of what makes the area feel established. They are also, every storm season, among the things most likely to end up on a roof. The ones that fail, arborists say, usually showed warning signs for months that most homeowners never noticed, simply because they were not looking up.

The cause is often not the wind alone. Heavy rain saturates the soil, the ground loosens its grip on the roots, and a gust the tree would have shrugged off in dry conditions is suddenly enough to topple it. That is why a full, green tree can still fail, and why the days right after a soaking rain are among the most dangerous of the season.

According to Strobert Tree Services, a certified arborist firm that has worked across the Delaware Valley since 2000, the most deceptive cases are the trees left standing after a storm, where a cracked branch union or hidden internal decay is nearly impossible to see from the ground and is often exactly what gives way in the next big wind. “People assume that if a tree survived the last storm, it is fine,” said Ed Goddard, Director of Business Development at Strobert Tree Services. “Sometimes the last storm is what weakened it. The failure you see this year started as a crack nobody noticed last year.”

Homeowners do not need to be arborists to catch the common signs. On a calm day, a walk around the yard can turn up dead or hanging limbs over a roof or driveway, cracks or open cavities in the trunk, or shelf-like fungus at the base that often signals decay in the roots. Soil heaving on one side of the trunk can mean the root plate is beginning to lift, and a lean that is new or clearly worsening deserves attention, as does any tree that dropped a large limb in a past storm and was never checked afterward. Caught in a quiet week, most of those are a manageable pruning job rather than an emergency.

When a storm has already hit, safety comes before cleanup. Downed wires and any limb touching them should be treated as live and reported to the utility, never approached, and broken branches lodged in a canopy, which crews call widow-makers, can fall without warning. Residents whose trees have come down on a city street or are blocking a public right of way can find the right department through the Trenton Post’s guide on reporting a problem to the city, and the paper keeps a rundown of winter storms and emergency alerts for Mercer County for those who want to know when severe weather is coming.

Not every damaged tree has to come down, a point Goddard’s firm says homeowners most often get wrong. A tree that has kept most of its canopy, with an intact trunk and main leader, will often recover fully, while removal becomes the right call when a trunk splits, when more than half the canopy is gone, when the main leader snaps out, when the roots lift, or when decay turns up inside. Short of removal, arborists can prune and reduce a crown to cut the wind load a tree has to withstand, cable or brace a weak union to add years to a mature tree, or treat the pests and diseases, including the emerald ash borer and spotted lanternfly now common across the region, that quietly weaken a tree from within.

The county’s canopy is an asset as much as a hazard, and the big shade trees in places like Trenton’s parks and neighborhoods take decades to replace. For any work near a house, a power line, or a property line, arborists recommend hiring only firms with ISA Certified Arborists on staff, asking for proof of liability and workers compensation insurance sent directly from the insurer, getting a written and itemized estimate, and treating any bid far below the others, or anyone going door to door after a storm, with caution. Strobert Tree Services, which serves the greater Delaware Valley, offers free estimates and can be reached through its website.