Windy weekend leaves mess for Central Coast homeowners
UPDATE 11/16/15 5:30 PM: A wind advisory for our area is now over, but not before causing damage throughout the Central Coast.
Now, many homeowners are left with a mess after branches and some trees were brought down. Arborists say our area’s trees are in big trouble right now. A lot of that because of a lack of water. These vulnerable trees plus high winds spell disaster.
The Monday morning commute was anything but routine for Mike Verducci. The Redwood City man was driving on Highway 101 south near westbound 156 when part of an Acacia tree fell on Verducci’s Ford Explorer. Neither he nor his passenger were hurt. CalTrans closed two lanes while it cleaned up the downed tree.
From Prunedale to the Peninsula. Iverson’s Tree Service has been chipping away at fallen trees.
“Mostly we’re seeing trees that have been ignored for quite some time and they’ve been dead for a while,” Mike Iverson explained, “So they tend to uproot and break off.”
Iverson said early Monday morning, strong winds uprooted a Monterey Cypress in Carmel, landing on someone’s home. Same story in Seaside, another tree landed on a home.
Ahead of what is expected to be a very busy winter, Iverson says the worst is yet to come.
“The trees are really drought stressed since we haven’t had any serious storms for the past five years,” Iverson said. “So everything’s kind of precarious right now. So a good thing to look for is spongy soil around the base of the tree, or any signs of decay around the root systems.”
Iverson says if homeowners have any trees they are concerned about, to have an arborist inspect it. The next step would be to have it removed. This is a very busy time of year for tree service companies, so the sooner, the better.
ORIGINAL POST:
Plenty of Central Coast residents woke up to downed tree limbs, even trees, after a windy weekend.
One Redwood city man was driving on Highway 101 South near 156 West Monday when a tree came down and landed on his car.
According to the National Weather Service, gusts between 40 and 50 miles per hour swept through our area. That, combined with the drought, spells trouble for Central Coast trees.
News Channel 5’s Mariana Hicks will have more on the damage we saw and what can be done as forecasters predict a stormy winter.
