Ice Storm Damage in Ohio

[BBTom]

Hope these pictures turn out good enough for you to see the kind of damage we got from the ice storm last week.

 This is one of moms two chestnut trees, the other one is laying flat having been pulled out of root.


 This shows a maple tree that was snapped off about 3 feet from the ground.


 This is a treeline that used to be pretty even along the tops.


The floor of the woods is littered with tops and limbs .  I figure we also lost about 1 tree per acre just pulled out of root.


another sickly looking treeline that didn't used to look that way.  

I will be cleaning up this mess for years.  We were just getting rid of the damage from the 1992 ice storm in this area.  I think this one was worse.  

Now I feel better,  I got to share the pain.  Thanks for listening!!

[Faron]

Those areas can be very dangerous for weeks or months to come.  With just the right wind gust those broken limbs will come right down on your head. One of the most nerve wracking jobs I ever did was a bunch of hickories with the tops broken off in a windstorm, and the tops still hanging up there. Be careful!

[rs1626]

we had that in southern ohio in feb. 2000 it took 10 guys 8 hrs. just to cut a path up our drive still cleaning up our drive have not really started in the woods yet so i know how your feeling

[WV_hillbilly]

  I was out in Columbus Friday and noticed alot of trees had ice damage .  

Is this going to affect your plans to harvest some of your larger maples ?  

[Grawulf]

BB,
We're just up the road from you and we LIVE in the middle of a woods. Was a scarry night listening to all the limbs and trees coming down. The house is right in the middle of some massive beeches and they seemed to be the hardest hit. Four or five maple and beech tipped over roots and all. All the more lumber for the new shop and mill shed. You're right about cleaning it up - going to be a lot of firewood for a number of years. Electric was off for four days but nice and snug with a woodstove and kerosine lamps. Lived like the Amish for a couple of days. - Had Forestry Forum withdrawl though :D :D There, now I feel better too! 8) 8) 8) 8)

[BBTom]

WV  - Yes, I have more than I can cut for a while now.  We were planning to take out the mature trees that had been damaged in the 1992 ice storm. Now we will have to start over with all our assesments on what is best for the woodlot.  

In this storm we must have lost about 6 Shagbark hickorys, 6 or 8 Maple, and uncounted numbers of cherry and oak.  Of course this happened the week after I closed a deal on 30,000 feet of cherry logs.   As we all know, when there is a storm that takes out so many trees,  many of them end up belonging to one woodworker or another, and they bring them to the sawmill to be sawed and dried.  I guess I don't have to worry about having something to do for a while.  
  
Graywulf - I know exactly what you mean,  your heart breaks a little bit with every crash you hear during one of these storms.:'(    the maple and beech have lots of small twigs at the end of their branches, so they catch all that much more of the freezing rain.  

I will not be making maple syrup this year, do not have near enough time to clean up the woods by the middle of Feb.  Guess I have to set some back for the family and hope that next year is a good one!    :-/

[etat]

We had a big ice storm in '92.  Lots and lots of pine around where we lived.  The next day we stood at the front door and watched em bend lower and lower.  When they finally started busting it sounded like somebody was shooting cannons.  Power lines went down everywhere. We was out of power for 15 days.  Had a gas stove and gas heat so we was ok other than we had to haul water.  This was before any of us had generators. Dad's freezer started thawing out and it was real hard on us trying to eat the steaks he had been a storing before they ruined. He lived a good ways from us then and we had went to check on him and mother  If we hadn't a showed up when we did he was a gonna feed em to the DOGS. ???  We took a bunch of em home and packed em in ice outside and made do..  

About a month before I had quit my job of a lot of years supervising  in a furniture factory. Long story.  I'd got bored sitting at home and asked a guy for a part time job roofing of all things.  It was 'cold' that year.  After the ice storm so many roofs was tore up he asked me to go full time.  

I did that for a while and then worked for him a few years learning the trade as a subcontractor.  Later we had a fallin out and I went out on my own.

Without a doubt I can trace my present business and my present lifestyle of not starving to death on the Ice Storm of '92.

I hope we don't have another one though and that's for sure.

[Al_Smith]

We got hit hard here.The storm chasers have made the scene,ripped the people off,and went down the road,before the law caught them.My friend,of whom I changed the booms for,on his  Hi Ranger[another site],has about 3 or 4 months work ahead of him.He was getting about 75 to 100 calls a day,for tree work,for the clean up.You should see some of the vacant lots in Lima.They are filled,10 feet high with brush,collected by the city.Clean up,in this little one horse town,is in excess of 2 million,wow.The bottom fell out of the forewood market,this year. :D

[Swede]

Haven´t been here for a while, we also had a storm!   Had no electric power from Jan. 8 to Jan. 14 when we got a big diesel-generator to the willage, the telephone is working today by help from the army.
Small roads still are full of fallen trees. Trains can´t go. Have had storms before but this one was more than all I´ve seen together. I read in the paper it can take 3 years to take care of all trees. They have to send timber to all over the country and also export. Before the storm Swedish sawmills imported timber from Russia, Balticum and Norway.
Some people have lost their lifes in the storm, others in accidents in the woods, Foresters have taken their lifes because they have lost all or some of their forest. The storm took most of the trees that chould be cut down the next 20 years and much 20-30 years old too. There are cres with no or a few vertical trees left.
Diesel-generators and forest machines comes from all the country and work 24 hours a day, people from telephone and power companies are working 60 hours a week, 40 is normal. The army and people from the whole country are involved in pulling new cables and repairing lines.
We have no snow and the land isn´t frosen but very wet.

Most of the forest here is spruce in 2:nd generation so it´s a foreign wood for Småland. On maps from 1850 you can´t see much of it. The last 45 years a lot of small fields here has been planted with spruce.

http://www.smp.se/section_standard.php?args=,101;213

Swede.

[Buzz-sawyer]

Wow swede
sounds like a bad situation...........but will it eventually help your business to have a lot of free or cheap trees?

[Swede]

Buzz-sawyer; I get some free spruce logs sometimes, most of them are cut down dead because of what we call "bark bugs". A man came here the other day and asked where to dump a load. I asked what I have to pay. He said he need 1 (one) 2x4" :D
I get more free logs than I need this way. I´m not up to sell much lumber. I want to saw logs, get paied and leave the place soon as possible. ;D

Have read in the paper that pulp wood price fell from $38,6 to $24,3. The timber price we have to wait for some weeks.
It will take to next summer before all forest are cleaned up. Heard that they want to spray something from helicopters to kill bugs in the wood. Can´t say I like it but what to do?


Have also been told that spruce logs can be left in water for 6 years. Since I came into FF and learned about forest and wood outside this area I´ve been telling people about stop planting spruce EVRYWHERE and turn over to hardwood. Telling them about PH in the soil, that we´ll get a warmer climate spruce don´t need, spruce damaged by rot, "bark bugs" and also economy by faster rotation. After the storm people are asking me how to turn over into hardwood!  ;D

Swede.

[Faron]

Swede, I heard about that storm on the weather channel. Pretty much hurricane force winds,if I remember correctly? How big an area is affected?

[Swede]

The storm took  ~75 000 000 M³ in an area  ~150x100 miles i think. The force was up to more than 40M/sec. some places.

Put an ad into the local paper this week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday. Have got 4-5 nice calls. One man asked me to saw some trees, than he asked me if I could take care of the lumber too. I don´t know exactly what he ment.  ???  ;D  One circular sawmill company asked me to saw  logs too big for them.

Swede.

[leweee]

Swede... Any pictures of the storm damage?

[oldsaw]

There is an area just north and northwest of Wichita that got nailed.  There was more than one grove of trees that looked like all the branches were just pushed down into the bottom of the trees.  We got 3-4" a couple of years ago in KC, but it didn't look like what I saw in KS.

Kinda sucks, there was a really nice 028 at a pawnshop on the trip...it was sold...probably at a premium.  They only had two left, neither one would I take on a bet.