Storm Damage Cleanup in Billings, MT

The weather that does the most harm to Billings trees is not always the biggest storm of the year. Often it is a heavy, wet snow in late September or early October, or another one in May, that lands while the trees still have their leaves. Green ash, silver maple, elm and cottonwood catch that snow like a net, and the next morning there are limbs across lawns all over town. Summer adds its own damage through high wind and hail rolling in off the Rims.

What We Clean Up

• Limbs on the ground, on roofs and draped over fences
• Broken branches still hanging in the canopy
• Split leaders and torn branch unions
• Trees that lost so much of the crown they cannot recover
• Brush piles left after your own cleanup

Pruning the Damage, Not Just Picking It Up

Hauling off what is on the ground is only part of the job. A limb that tore off leaves a jagged stub or a strip of peeled bark running down the trunk, and those wounds are where decay gets in. We cut each break back to a proper branch collar or a healthy lateral so the tree can close it over, and we thin out cracked limbs that survived but will not hold the next load.

Hail and Wind Damage

Hail shreds leaves and bruises thin bark on young trees and the smaller branches of older ones. Most trees push out new leaves and recover, but badly damaged young ornamentals may need some corrective pruning. Wind does the opposite: it targets the biggest, heaviest limbs and the trees with the most sail in their crowns.

Trees along the Yellowstone and in the West End that carry big, dense crowns, such as cottonwoods and older silver maples, usually take the worst of a summer windstorm. Spruce and pine shed snow better in winter but can be uprooted when the ground is soft, so after a storm we look at the base of evergreens as carefully as we look at the broken branches up top.

Reducing the Next Storm's Damage

Trees that have been thinned and had their weak limbs removed hold snow and wind much better. After a cleanup, we can set up regular tree trimming to get ahead of the next early snow. If a tree is too far gone to save, our tree removal crew takes it down.

Before You Start Cutting

• Keep away from limbs touching wires
• Be careful with bent limbs under load; they can spring back
• Knock snow off small trees gently from below rather than shaking hard