Anyone preparing for Sandy?

[Chickerdoodle13]

Still ok here, but the wind is really picking up. South Jersey is getting a beating with the flooding and the storm hasn't even arrived yet. I'm heading out in a few minutes to move the chickens from the old coop that floods into the new one that we were able to finish yesterday. Hope everyone else is still doing ok!

 

[Kaitie09]

I'm getting increasing worried about an old pine we have. It is top heavy and leans towards the goat and chicken shed. If it falls, it has the potential to fall directly on the shed, which would most likely crush it. We did not lock the goats up, so they could possibly get away from it, but the chickens are locked up. It it does fall, it is going to ruin the goats fencing. Luckily the girls are good about staying in the yard when they get out, an we have an run in area on the side of the garage. We let them out in the summer and that is where they run to if we get a sudden storm, so hopefully they will go there. We decided to lock the chicken up, just in case their run gets crushed, and the wind was blowing directly through their pop door. We live on a steep hill so we don;t have to worry about flooding, and we picked up all the outside debris We just have to worry about falling trees now.

The wind is really picking up here, but we will get the worst of it tonight. We're considering sleeping in the basement, just for extra protection.

 

[GardenerGal]

Kaitie09, What direction is the wind coming from? If the tree is going to lose limbs or fall, it might go the other way away from the shed if it's getting blown against from the opposite direction.

Here it's coming from the NE and the reports say it will be an ENE wind later. For me, that's "great" because it isn't blowing into the barn front door or side door, and the tree branches are being blown away from the house and barn.

Right now my barn is open, the chickens can go in and out to their run, and the waterfowl are in their outdoor pen. I am monitoring them every hour and as soon as the wind picks up more everyone will be shoo'd into the barn and I'll close the doors. That will happen in the next hour as the wind just got worse!

Good luck everyone. I hope we don't lose our electricity! Kaitie, let us know how things are going.

 

[Kaitie09]

The wind is switching directions every 5 minutes, so if it falls, we'll have no idea which direction the trees going. The lights are flickering a bit here too, but no power outages yet. I went out to check on everyone about 20 minutes ago and they were all fine. The goats were hunkered down looking out their door, and the chickens were laying around their food. It is quiet and warm it there, but the goats looked a little concerned and have not touched their hay.

When I was standing outside by the shed, the tree actually looks like it is leaning more towards the garage, so it is falls, hopefully it will land there. We're hoping it will just split. It is extremely top heavy but the bottom 30ft of the trunk is huge and straight. If it does split, it will most likely fall straight down and destroy the goats fencing, but we're okay with that.

 

[Snozzle]

I'm getting increasing worried about an old pine we have. It is top heavy and leans towards the goat and chicken shed. If it falls, it has the potential to fall directly on the shed, which would most likely crush it. We did not lock the goats up, so they could possibly get away from it, but the chickens are locked up. It it does fall, it is going to ruin the goats fencing. Luckily the girls are good about staying in the yard when they get out, an we have an run in area on the side of the garage. We let them out in the summer and that is where they run to if we get a sudden storm, so hopefully they will go there. We decided to lock the chicken up, just in case their run gets crushed, and the wind was blowing directly through their pop door. We live on a steep hill so we don;t have to worry about flooding, and we picked up all the outside debris We just have to worry about falling trees now.

The wind is really picking up here, but we will get the worst of it tonight. We're considering sleeping in the basement, just for extra protection.

Can you maybe tie a rope to it and secure it to something for extra support? I did that when all those crazy tornadoes came tearing through a while back and it seemed to work.

 

[Farmer X]

I would stay away from that pine while the storm is coming through. On the bright side, Pines tend to break up and drop limbs rather than uproot (unlike spruces, which love to uproot).

 

[GardenerGal]

FarmerX is right. Pines do tend to snap from the bottom or mid-trunk, not uproot. We have lots of Eastern White Pine around here, and after the last big wind storm there were plenty of snapped pine trunks. By contrast, the oak trees were uprooted. They all had shallow root systems because they were growing on bedrock ledge with thin soil, and their dense, heavy wood and heavy canopies made them very top-heavy. Pines have less dense wood (they are fast growing, and the faster growing a tree, normally the less dense the wood) so they break instead of uproot.

Kaitie, I hope that pine keeps on holding together. So far so good...

 

[Kaitie09]

When we had an ice storm a few years ago, one of the bigger branches did split. I don't know how old the tree is, but it has got to be at least 80ft and it the tallest in our woods. Only the top 20-30ft have an branches left on it. I'm guessing it will snap too.

 

[GardenerGal]

That sounds like a typical eastern white pine. The lower branches die off as the tree grows and all of the canopy is at the top when it is mature. That's a natural process. When I was a kid, we called those dead lower branches "squaw wood," because according to the local history, Indian women would break off those branches (and pick up fallen ones from the ground) as firewood. The state forest campgrounds around here have clean-trunked white pines because campers have harvested the dead branches. And a single eastern white pine of the size you describe we called a "wolf tree" because the legend was when there was a lone pine standing in a clearing like that, the wolves would use it as a meeting spot and stand under it to howl!

Immature eastern white pines have that "Christma tree" shape but that is not the mature form the tree takes.

Anyway, it's very common for branches to split off pines, but it doesn't mean that the trunk will snap if the tree is healthy and doesn't have rot inside. Arborists will thump the trunk of a tree with a rubber mallet and listen to the sound. If it is a hollow kind of thump, it means beetles or something have created cavities inside. A more solid thump means the wood is solid and firm. You can test it yourself after the hurricane has passed -- I'm optimistic that your pine will be standing there.

 

[kreagerm]

The winds are about 30mph here(northern Baltimore county) but the eye is just approaching Maryland Ocean City, it should be right over my house around midnight. Gotta say I'm a little nervous, we already have one pine down and lost power about noon today. The girls put them selves in the coop around 1 and so at that point I locked them in. Depending on the weather tomorrow, they might be inside all day tomorrow too. I boarded up their windows just incase debris is flying around. Good luck everyone, this is going to be a very long and sleepless night!!!!