Every hurricane season we get the same call: a tree came down, nobody saw it coming, and now it is on a roof. Almost every time, when we get there, the tree had been telling somebody for a while.
Trees rarely fail at random. They fail at a weak point that already existed. You do not need to be an arborist to spot most of them — you need to know where to look, and to look before the wind arrives rather than after.
The four things worth walking your property for
1. A dead top
If the upper crown of a pine is bare while the rest is green, the tree has stopped supporting its own top. That dead section is the first thing to come out in a blow, and it comes out as a spear rather than a branch. Around Bay County we still see this constantly on pines that took damage in 2018 and have been quietly declining since.
2. Ground lifting on the opposite side of a lean
A lean by itself is not a problem. Plenty of trees grow at an angle their whole lives and are perfectly sound. What matters is whether the lean is new, and whether the soil on the opposite side is cracked or raised. That means the root plate is moving. A tree with a moving root plate in saturated sand is the one that goes over whole.
3. Bark coming away in plates
Loose or falling bark with nothing healthy underneath usually means the tree is dead or dying in that section. On a large limb over a driveway or a bedroom, that is worth dealing with now rather than in November.
4. Two trunks joined in a tight V
Where two stems meet in a narrow V rather than a broad U, bark often gets trapped in the join and the union never fully knits. Those splits are a common failure in laurel oaks and water oaks. Wide-angled forks are far stronger than tight ones.
What sandy soil changes
On the coast — Panama City Beach, Destin, the 30A communities, Cape San Blas — root plates grip less than they would inland. A pine that looks identical to one in Crestview can have far less holding it up. Add a few days of heavy rain before a storm and the ground gives up before the trunk does.
That is why we treat the same species differently depending on where it stands. It is also why saturated ground plus wind is a worse combination than wind alone.
What is worth doing before the season
Not every concerning tree needs removing. Often the right answer is a reduction — taking weight out of the crown so there is less sail area for wind to push against — or clearing deadwood so there is less to come loose. Both are cheaper than a removal and keep the tree.
What we would not do is top a tree. Cutting the crown back to stubs removes the growth the tree relies on and forces weak regrowth that fails worse later. If someone offers to “hurricane cut” your palms back to a spike, that weakens them rather than protecting them.
When it is already too late
If something is already down and unsafe — on a structure, hung up in another tree, or blocking your only way out — that is emergency work and we take those calls outside office hours. If a tree is touching a power line, call the utility first. That has to be made safe before anyone goes near it, and we will not put a climber next to an energised line for anybody.
If you want a straight opinion on a tree you are unsure about, we will give you one. Sometimes that opinion is that it is fine and you should save your money. Call (850) 818-9694.