This has been a fairly rough winter.  We had at least three separate storms that dumped over a foot of snow.  And then just as it looked as if spring was around the corner with a couple of absolutely gorgeous days, we got a storm with a combination of tremendous rainfall and such high winds that more trees than ever before were knocked down.

Here is one just a couple of corners from our house that came up with its entire root ball and missed the nearby house only by a bit:

Here is one that went across Fenimore road, a major connector leading into Hartsdale:

As you can see, this one rests on the power, cable and phone lines.  Amazingly, in this instance, the lines held up the huge tree, but all across Scarsdale power lines were down, resulting in a prolonged power outage for more than 80% of Scarsdale.  We have friends who lost power as early as mid-day Saturday and don’t have it back as of Monday night.  We were super lucky with power being out only for a few hours while the tree in the picture above was removed and cable (which for us also means Internet and telephone) out Sunday and Monday.

Now none of this is a catastrophe and thankfully as far as I know nobody was seriously injured. But it is worth noting that this winter’s weather pattern is consistent with climate change caused by green house gases.  Warming of air masses results in stronger wind forces and also allows the air to absorb more moisture.  The energy contained in a storm rises quadratically with the speed of wind and in combination with downpours which loosen roots can cause significantly more damage than we have previously experienced. 

Somehow I suspect it will have to get a lot worse though before this will serve as a catalyst for change.  In the meantime, I am bracing for higher insurance bills, because the insurance companies won’t wait a long time.  A friend of mine who has an agency in Scarsdale said they experienced record claims, far eclipsing any previous storm.

This has been a fairly rough winter.  We had at least three separate storms that dumped over a foot of snow.  And then just as it looked as if spring was around the corner with a couple of absolutely gorgeous days, we got a storm with a combination of tremendous rainfall and such high winds that more trees than ever before were knocked down.

Here is one just a couple of corners from our house that came up with its entire root ball and missed the nearby house only by a bit:

Here is one that went across Fenimore road, a major connector leading into Hartsdale:

As you can see, this one rests on the power, cable and phone lines.  Amazingly, in this instance, the lines held up the huge tree, but all across Scarsdale power lines were down, resulting in a prolonged power outage for more than 80% of Scarsdale.  We have friends who lost power as early as mid-day Saturday and don’t have it back as of Monday night.  We were super lucky with power being out only for a few hours while the tree in the picture above was removed and cable (which for us also means Internet and telephone) out Sunday and Monday.

Now none of this is a catastrophe and thankfully as far as I know nobody was seriously injured. But it is worth noting that this winter’s weather pattern is consistent with climate change caused by green house gases.  Warming of air masses results in stronger wind forces and also allows the air to absorb more moisture.  The energy contained in a storm rises quadratically with the speed of wind and in combination with downpours which loosen roots can cause significantly more damage than we have previously experienced. 

Somehow I suspect it will have to get a lot worse though before this will serve as a catalyst for change.  In the meantime, I am bracing for higher insurance bills, because the insurance companies won’t wait a long time.  A friend of mine who has an agency in Scarsdale said they experienced record claims, far eclipsing any previous storm.