Getting Ahead of Storm Season Before It Arrives

Why does the calendar matter more than the weather does?

Because of what happens to every crew in the county on the same night.

After a regional storm, the order of work is not set by who rang first, and it is not negotiable. Life safety comes first. Then anything blocking a public road. Then utilities getting access so power can be restored. Then private property, which is where you and your driveway are.

That is the correct order and nobody should want a different one. What it means in practice is that a job which was ordinary and schedulable in September becomes, in October, a private job sitting behind a large number of urgent ones. Same tree, same work, completely different proposition.

So, the value of doing something now is not that the tree becomes storm-proof. Nothing does. It is that the work happens at all, on a date you picked, at an ordinary price, by a crew that has not been going since four in the morning.

What is actually worth doing before the season?

A short list, and it is shorter than most storm-preparation articles suggest.

Deal with the tree you already know about. Almost every property has one. The one you look at when it is windy. If it has already been identified as failing or dying, that is a scheduled removal now or an emergency later, and those are genuinely different products. Our post on why insurance may not cover a tree you knew was dying covers why the knowing part matters.

Sort the access. Covered properly two sections down, and it is the item people never think of.

Know who to ring for what. Wires are the utility. A tree in the road is the town. A tree on your house is your insurer and then a removal crew. Working that out at nine on a wet Tuesday night is harder than it sounds.

Have anything you are unsure about looked at by the right person. Which is the next section, because it is not us.

What is not worth doing: pre-emptively removing healthy trees because a storm might come. That is a lot of money spent on a maybe, and a wooded property in Connecticut is not made safe by having fewer trees in it.

Who should be judging whether a tree is a problem?

This is the honest boundary and it is worth being direct about.

Deciding whether a tree is structurally sound, whether a defect is progressing, or whether something can be retained rather than removed, is an assessment. In Connecticut that is licensed arborist work, and we do not hold that credential. We remove trees and clear land, and we do not prune, trim or judge the health of a standing tree.

So, if the question in your head is "is this tree going to be all right", the person to ring is a Connecticut-licensed arborist. If the answer comes back that it needs to come out, that is when we are useful.

What you can do yourself, from the ground and without touching anything, is notice. What to look for is set out in seven warning signs it is time to remove a tree and how to know if a tree is at risk of falling. Neither of them turns you into an assessor and both of them tell you when to ask somebody who is.

Can a truck actually get to the back of your property?

Here is the item nobody writes about, and it takes ten minutes in August.

Walk the route a crew would have to take from the road to the part of the property most likely to need clearing, and look at it as a vehicle rather than as a person.

The gate that has dropped on its hinges and now only opens to sixty degrees. The shrubs either side of the drive that have put on two feet since they went in. The turning space that is where the trailer lives now. The soft corner that is fine in a dry August and is not in a wet October. The low branch over the drive that a car goes under and a truck does not.

Every one of those is a small job now. In the week after a storm each of them is the reason a crew works slower, comes back another day, or cannot get in at all. And unlike the weather, all of it is entirely within your control.

While you are out there, note where you would want a machine not to go: the septic field, the well head, the leach lines. Saying that to somebody in advance is much easier than pointing at ruts afterwards.

What can you safely do yourself?

Ordinary property sense, and nothing involving height or a saw.

Move or secure what would become a projectile. Garden furniture, bins, the trampoline, anything light in an open position. Connecticut's severe storm guidance covers the household side of preparation properly.

Clear the ground-level stuff that blocks access, which is the same walk as the section above.

Know where your own buried services run, because that information is useful to any crew and nobody else has it.

And leave the rest alone. Nothing on a ladder, nothing overhead, nothing near a wire. DEEP is clear that anything involving trees and utility lines is a matter for the utility, and a roadside tree comes under the town, with DEEP publishing guidance on who to contact for roadside work.

What about the paperwork side?

Two things, both quick, and neither of them is exciting.

Know what your policy actually says before you need to know. Connecticut's Insurance Department publishes guidance on homeowners storm claims, and the useful time to read your own deductible is not while standing in a wet garden.

Take a few dated photographs of the property while everything is upright and normal. Wide shots, nothing clever. If something happens later, the value of a "before" is that it exists and cannot be recreated.

One more, because it belongs to the same season. After a widespread storm the door-knocking starts, and the Attorney General's office publishes an alert on common clean-up scams for exactly that reason. Deciding in advance that you will not agree to anything at the door removes the pressure entirely, and we went through how to check somebody properly in storm cleanup scams and what to check.

When is the best time to actually book the work?

Whenever the ground is firm and the calendar is quiet, which around here means most of late summer and early autumn.

Firm ground matters more than the month does, because equipment reaching a tree is the constraint on most properties. A dry spell in August is a better working week than a mild one in March. Our post on the best time of year to remove a tree in Connecticut goes through the seasons properly.

What is worth avoiding is the fortnight after a big storm, which is when everybody rings and nobody can be fitted in, and the fortnight before a forecast one, which is when the same thing happens for a different reason.

If a tree genuinely cannot wait, none of the above applies. Something in contact with a wire, across a road, on a structure or actively moving is not a scheduling conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions About storm season tree preparation connecticut

Does removing a tree before storm season prevent damage?

It removes one specific risk if that tree was the risk. It does not make a property storm-proof, and pre-emptively taking down healthy trees is a lot of expense against a maybe. The work worth doing early is the work you were going to need anyway.

Why is it so hard to get anybody out after a storm?

Because the order of work is set by safety rather than by who rang. Life safety, public roads, utility access, then private property. Every crew in the area is working that same order at once, which is why a private job can wait days.

Who decides whether my tree is dangerous?

A Connecticut-licensed arborist, for anything that is an assessment of condition. We do not hold that credential and we will say so. What we can tell you is what a removal would involve if it comes to that.

Should I have the trees near the power line dealt with?

Not by yourself and not by us. Anything involving utility lines is a matter for the utility, and DEEP's guidance says so plainly.

Is it cheaper to book before the season?

The more useful difference is availability and control rather than price. Scheduled work happens on a date you chose, with the access sorted and the scope agreed in advance. Emergency work is a different product with different constraints.

What if I do nothing at all?

That is a legitimate choice on a property with no obvious problem tree and clear access. The point of the list above is not that everybody needs all of it. It is that the two items most likely to cost you later, the tree you already worry about and a route a truck cannot use, are both fixable now and neither is fixable at eleven at night in a gale.

Final Thoughts

The honest case for getting ahead of storm season is not that it makes the storm smaller. It is that it moves the work you were going to need out of a queue that is ordered by other people's emergencies, and into a week you chose.

So, the list is short. Deal with the tree you already know about, because it is a scheduled job now and an emergency later. Walk the access route as though you were driving a truck down it, and fix the gate, the branch and the turning space while it is a ten-minute problem. Get a condition question answered by somebody licensed to answer it. Read your own policy while it is dry. Then leave the healthy trees alone and stop worrying about the rest of it, because that part was never in your hands anyway.

Hennessey Tree & Landscape works out of Oxford, CT and covers seventeen towns across western Connecticut. Joe Hennessey looks at every job himself, so a scheduled removal gets its access route, its drop zone and its debris plan settled long before the equipment arrives. If there is a tree you have been meaning to deal with, late summer is the easy time to do it. We handle tree removal, emergency storm response, stump grinding, land clearing and brush removal, with regular hours Monday to Saturday, 7am to 5pm and emergency dispatch around the clock. Call (203) 751-2451 or get in touch.