Was a red warning storm today where I am, possibly strongest winds ever recorded in England.
After the peak I went for a walk in local park and was struck that it was certain species of trees that were damaged and others were not and was wondering how to record this in ispot. Perhaps just pictures of large branches or whole trees down but need to be careful about sample bias. The local park is big and has a wide range of trees often with many examples of each species so it was very clear for example that the most damaged trees were Cedars, then perhaps Douglas fir. It was particularly interesting that the park used to have a number of very old cedars that were lost I think in the 1987 storm or a few years before and it is the ones planted since which are now badly damaged or completely fallen. Perhaps the UK climate is now too stormy for Cedars.
Yes, interesting topic @miked …MK Parks Trust has advised the Met Office has issued an Amber weather warning for today (Friday 18th February)…They’ve advised visitors to please take care when visiting the parks and to avoid wooded areas or walking underneath trees as the high winds forecast may cause branches to fall. So, this is a good one to consider when out and about once the high winds have settled down a bit.
The tree falling in Bude made the news… someone suggested it was a Cedar. Anyone on iSpot from Bude area?
Incidentally, some reported it must be fake news because it was in leaf; oh well, we try to educate, but we don’t always win.
Cedars in parks often have the lower branches cut off to let people walk underneath them. That makes them unstable.
In nature the lowest branches are partly supported by resting on the ground and higher branches by the ones under them. They’re very stable against wind throw when left like that. With the lower branches removed they often collapse from the bottom upwards, but they also lose protection against blowing over.
Trees of all sorts have lower branches removed to make it easier to mow under and otherwise tidy up the area. It also makes it annoying if you want to photograph the leaves and fruit if they are way up in sky. However in dim distant past I recall being in a native cedar forest outside UK and the branches were all high up as lower ones had been naturally lost, also see similar thing with Cedars as well as most other species when in forests in uk. The overall forest provides some protection and of course when one tree falls or is cut then several others can come down too.
There are both cedars and monkey puzzles near me. Both seem to suffer broken branches in high winds but none have (at least not in the last 52 years) been blown over.