Snapped Trees In Branford

Press release from the Branford Land Trust:

December 8, 2020

November 21, 2020. Saturday. A gift day, warm, sunny, almost t-shirt weather at Thanksgiving. Into the woods. To the Supply Ponds, the Town of Branford’s magnificent central preserve managed by Branford Parks and Open Space Authority. I had not been there for months, not since the August rainless tropical storm, not since the August microburst three weeks later. Expecting a lovely walk in the autumn woods. Greeted by devastation.

I parked, walked onto the Red Trail, and was appalled by the extent of the damage. Oaks snapped. Oaks felled. Limbs splintered and hanging high above, widowmakers waiting to descend. Five minutes in, I heard a rustling falling, and a terminal thud. A storm-ripped piece had hit the ground 20 feet away. I warned a family, masked and out for a stroll. “Keep your eyes up, it’s not safe here.”

Cell-phone camera in hand, I tried to capture the damage on pixels, but the small screen barely does it justice. It does not capture the depth of field, the size of the broken pieces, or how small the photographer feels, standing next to a sixteen-inch, seventy foot deadfall, with its shallow plate of roots standing ten feet high.

So, there it is. I moved to Branford in 2005 and this is at least the fifth time the trees have been destroyed: the microburst at Goss/Vedder and the Pine Orchard Country Club; Irene; Sandy; and twice this past August. Not counting: the freak October snowstorm that destroyed the power grid in northern Connecticut a few years back, leaving those hill-dwellers without electricity for weeks. Not counting: the tornado that demolished Sleeping Giant State Park last year. I’ve weathered four multi-day blackouts, and sprung for a generator. Something’s happening here…

Climate, my friends, is nothing but the average of weather. Give me ten warm Novembers and I will tell you the November climate is warming. But even the most ardent climate-change denier will tell you the weather in his back yard has gone nuts, gotten mean. These windstorms? This ain’t right. It is not normal to get a tornado a year in Connecticut. It’s not normal for Louisiana and east Texas to get five hurricane hits in one season. In Connecticut, we should not be chain-sawing the wreckage of trashed trees every year. People are giving up: they are having the tree surgeons cut their trees down ahead of time. Better to pay someone to do it right, than find it sticking through the bedroom roof.

Just yesterday (November 30), a non-event storm brought gusts up to 60 miles an hour. There is no way the trees can adapt to weather changing this fast — can we? What does global warming look like in Connecticut? It looks like wicked storms and snapped trees.

Adaptation is up to us. After all, we caused the problem.

• For suggestions on what you can do, visit this helpful link from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Snapped trees. More than you want to count. Scattered. The microburst devastated some areas, skipped others, and hit again.

Waiting to fall. This can’t abide. Someday this will shift, and 60 feet of log will crash down to the ground. Trees fall fast and hit hard.

This double-trunked tree split in half, 8 feet above the ground, with the halves falling in opposite directions. It will be spread-eagled, visible to hikers, for years.

Dangling. Someone sawed the trunk off, at ladder height, and it hangs there. Gravity will someday win.

Trashed. All beauty gone. The wind demolished the top of this tree, snapped, twisted, dangling 50 feet above ground.

Snapped and twisted—amid the destruction, this braided double-split caught my eye.

The trail marker/blaze does not confer immunity.

A chain saw warrior—essential worker now?—made his (or her) mark.

The gap. A 120 year old oak blocks the path—how long will people walk through this notch?

The notch, backpack view, for scale. It was not a small tree.

Counting back, from the bark, 67 years. I am 67 years old, and the penknife marks the outer edge of the tree when I was born. The rest of the diameter, the outer rings, have been added during my lifetime. It has sequestered a lot of carbon while I have lived. It is down now. What happens to the carbon in wood when it dies and rots? Does it go back into the atmosphere?

The open road. Someone busted their ass with a chain saw to reopen this trail.

This press release was produced by the Branford Land Trust. The views expressed are the author's own.