Emergency Tree Service in Virginia Beach: 24/7 Storm Damage Tree Removal

Fall Nor’easters: The Storms That Take Hampton Roads Trees by Surprise

Hurricane season winds down and everyone relaxes. Then a nor’easter sets up off the Outer Banks in October or November and does something a hurricane rarely does here: it stays. A hurricane crosses Virginia Beach in a matter of hours. A fall nor’easter parks offshore and pushes northeast wind, rain and tide at the coast for two or three days straight.

That is exactly the wrong weather for our trees. In October the oaks still have their leaves, so a canopy that would let a January wind through catches the whole load. By the second day the ground is saturated, and along the Bay and the Lynnhaven the tide has pushed water up into yards that never flood, so the root plate is sitting in mud. A water oak or loblolly pine that looked fine all summer tips over whole — roots and all — often on the last night of the storm, after the worst of the wind has already passed.

If a nor’easter is sitting over Hampton Roads as you read this, the trees that are going to fail are already showing it: a lean that was not there yesterday, soil lifting on the uphill side of a trunk, a limb hanging by a strip of bark over the driveway. The setup comes back every fall, and it finds the same trees: the leaner nobody looked at, the loblolly pine standing alone after the neighbors took theirs out, the water oak with a hollow nobody could see from the ground. Art-is-Tree LLC runs emergency tree service through every nor’easter, not just hurricanes — if a tree is on the house, leaning at the house, or blocking the road in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake or Portsmouth, call (757) 319-5131 now and a real person picks up.

What to look at before the first fall storm

• A lean that was not there last year, or soil lifting and cracking on the side away from the lean. That is a root plate starting to move.
• Dead limbs and hangers over the roof, the driveway or the service drop. Wind does not need a whole tree to fail to put a limb through a window.
• Loblolly pines left standing alone. Pines grow up in a stand and share the wind; the last one left catches all of it.
• Water oaks and other soft-wooded trees with cavities, fungal conks at the base, or a co-dominant union that has started to split.

A few hours of storm-prep trimming in September is cheaper than any emergency call in November, and the warning signs a tree gives before it fails are laid out in our storm & hurricane damage case study. If the storm gets there first, the same crew answers 24/7 — and documents the damage for your insurance claim.