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tree fell on house


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This was across the street from an inspection yesterday. The branches had buds so the tree looked alive and well. The root system was not healthy enough to hold it with the weight of heavy wet snow. The entire thing uprooted.

People were home at the time but luckily nobody was hurt. The upper branches impaled all the way into the living space and the garage was basically sliced in half. There's a car in the garage under the trunk of the tree.

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Holy crap! What kind of tree is that? I have a huge oak not more that 10 feet from my bed. Looking at those pictures doesn't give me a good feeling.

I doubt the weight of the snow caused that in any way. Compared to the weight of the tree, the added snow load would be negligible. It's unusual for a deciduous tree to fall when it's dormant.

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Oh great! It's a red oak next to my bed. It's got a bigger diameter than that one and is only 7 feet from the house, so it's root system is even smaller. It'll be tossing and turning for me tonight fer sure.

Why would the tree be full of buds in January? What zone are you in? I'm in Zone 6 and my Oaks don't start to bud out til early-mid April.

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Oh great! It's a red oak next to my bed. It's got a bigger diameter than that one and is only 7 feet from the house, so it's root system is even smaller. It'll be tossing and turning for me tonight fer sure.

Why would the tree be full of buds in January? What zone are you in? I'm in Zone 6 and my Oaks don't start to bud out til early-mid April.

Well, I might be stating it wrong by saying buds. You can look at the very tips and see the little knobs on the ends of the tiny branch tips. Aren't they dormant buds?

Anyway, dead trees usually don't have the tiny knobs on the very tips of branches.

Here's an example.

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One problem with big trees close to houses is the trees tend to grow out more over the house. Without other trees on that side to compete with, they reach out for all the extra space. This makes them heavy on the side that overhangs the house. When they fall, its usually towards the heavy side.

The tree in the picture had competition with other large trees on its other side. This made it grow heavy out over the house side. You can see from the picture by the direction of the branches that it was growing out primarily on one side. That's the side it fell to.

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