Hmm, I wouldn't have guessed there would be a difference between those two.

I would not draw any conclusions about how two or three different individual trees respond to an ice storm. Individual trees within the same species can react differently based on their specific location (microclimate) and individual genetic differences. It is true that some kinds of trees are much more resistant to ice damage than others, but I would draw no conclusions based on such a small sample.

One example--my neighbor here in Winchester, VA had a white pine, a fairly large and nice one. Since I moved here there have been two ice storms, and this tree was destroyed--half way in the first, the rest of the way in the second. Not one hundred yards away is a line of white pines--a bit younger, but not one of these other white pines even lost one limb in those ice storms.

I could tell a number of similar stories, but I think you get my point.

--Spruce

I sure am sorry about the loss of your shumard oaks!
The pictures I've been seeing on TV look terrible!
Sherry

I would have predicted that outcome. I thought shumard oaks were like maple wood. I'm glad to hear you made it thru the storm saftywise and have power and broadband. (I'm assuming)
Ice storms suck. equally as miserable as a hurricane.

We had a terrible ice storm like you guys in 2003. Trees were severely damaged in many areas. Especially our willow oaks, and other large and widespreading oaks. You'd be surprised how much progress they made since then. If you are able to prune them successfully, I'd wait and see before yanking them out. Ours here look like they were never damaged. Good luck! Pics would be great too. But hey...if there was anything good about it...there will surely be a lot less Bradford Pears out there heheh ;)

Willow oaks and water oaks are the two worst oak species for ice damage. They grow fast, but their wood is relatively weak and brittle.

I'm going to agree with Spruceman on this particular thread. Shumard oak is generally considered a strong wooded tree with a long life span. It is actually rated higher than Northern Red Oak among some woodworkers who use it for flooring, cabinets, etc. I do think that White oak or Bur oak would be better adapted to ice storms though.

I generally agree with most of the posters. We too got hit by this ice storm, but luckily here it wasn't nearly as severe(just to the North and West of me it was). We have about 1/2 inch of ice on all the trees, but the paved areas mostly didn't freeze. I've noticed a few trees imploding, but mostly just some minor to medium amounts of limbs lost on some older trees. Elms, Sweetgums, and Callery Pears look to be the worst hit, although I would say generally the damage is minor to moderate at best.

Although back in January 2004(I believe it was) we had the worst ice storm I've ever experienced, with 4 inches of ice coating everything and major damage on more than 1/2 the trees in the area. I didn't notice any Shumard Oaks with higher than average damage. In fact most Shumard Oaks looked to have weathered the storm quite well. Pin Oaks on the other hand were much harder hit, but even they weren't hit nearly as hard as trees like Sweetgums, Silver Maples, Elms, Callery Pears, etc. Also, the few Willow Oaks around didn't have any damage that I could tell. The big Water Oak down the road from me only had 1 small branch on the ground. Strangely enough I noticed several Bur Oaks and Swamp White Oaks with some severe damage. I had a couple of Swamp White Oaks and a Bur Oak snap in 2 about 15' up. All were about 30' tall when this happened. I also saw some wild Bur Oaks do the same. Most of the largest Bur Oaks had much less damage. But even with that said, like jqpublic noted, you'd be hard pressed to notice the damage on most trees now. Even the ones that snapped in 2 have grown new leaders(even though some have noticeable jog in their trunk where the break occurred!) . If you start to examine things closer you do start to notice where the damage was, but most people are oblivious to it.

I forgot to add to what alabamatreehugger posted. Often times Shumard Oak is just marketed as Red Oak, along with Northern Red Oak and a few other species because in general use it's deemed the same as Northern Red Oak in quality. But I have also heard from a couple of cabinet makers that they prefer Shumard Oak when they come across it.(One even said he could pick it out from the "Red Oak" pile when it was lumped in with other Red Oaks)

I understand all too well what ice can do. I live in Western NY State and we have an substantial Ice Storm about once every 10 years - the last two were in 1991 and 2003. During the last one with were without power for more than 2 weeks, you could just hear the trees snapping during the storm (a sad and sickening sound), and in places hit even worse, it looked as if a bomb had gone off. I ran across documents similar to those below in the aftermath here. Hopefully these can help:

http://www.heartlandtreealliance.org/full_content.php?article_id=435&full=yes&pbr=1
http://www.moforest.org/First-AidforStorm-DamagedTrees.pdf
http://agweb.okstate.edu/fwa/documents/StandingTall.pdf

FataMorgana

katrinal,
Hope things warm up soon for y'al. If you can, report back on any other observations you have about how certain species fared during the ice storm.
From growing up in north La., I remember vividly that Short-leaf pine fared much better than Loblolly, and that large old Eastern Red Cedar seemed to fare worse than the younger specimens that were still triangular shaped.

You can pretty much say goodbye to zelkovas if you grow thosoe out there.

Ditto to the others about ice-storm damage -- I had alot of observations from the 1994 storms in SW VA (3" of ice). A 90' Scarlet oak was virtually destroyed while the adjacent 85' Table mountain pine to the west had badly bent limbs but they sprang back w/no permanent damage. Needless to say the evergreen pine had alot more area exposed to potential ice accumulation than the bare oak. I guessed that the oak had "shielded" the pine alittle from the ice that came on an easterly wind. There were many similar situations that were unexpected.

Don't give up on your oaks -- they can recover from such damage faster & better than you'd think. I would recommend spending the money and/or effort to do proper trimming of the dead/damaged branches, but it doesn't have to be done right away.

Yes, I also had 4 of my loblolly trees on a vacant lot south of town, whose main leader trunks broke in half. they were almost 15 feet tall, and had trunks about 4-5 inches in girth. It did not surprise me that they broke, since they are such soft wood, fast growing trees.

I am wondering if it would be better to replace them with Ponderosa Pines?

We have also had ice storms before, but conditions were such that none of my oaks suffered any branch failure.

This past event concerns be a little due to the ground being so warm when the cold arrived. My rose bushes, Crape myrtles, ornamental Corinthian peach tree, and clematis vines had not finished going dormant and were covered with more than an inch of ice when I could see that the leaves were covered with the ice and still looked green. Will this cold damage them severly since they had not gone completely dormant yet?

Also, all of my Thuja Plicata 'Green Giants' performed beautifully. The off and on rain that froze layers of ice did stick to the leaves. That ice on them was so heavy it make my 8-9 foot tall ones that had been growing in my yard for three, almost years were bent in half, but neither any of their main leaders or their brances broke. Once the icing melted, the trees recovered and within a day were standing straight and tall again.

On another lot, where late this last summer, I had planted some Green Giants, they are now about 4-5 feet tall and I had to stake them because the force of them also leaning over in half from the ice weight caused their rootballs to be pulled out of the ground on one side. There is now no other damage on them, and they are also standing up straight.

This event has changed my mind a little about not staking newly planted trees. Even my spring planted 10 foot tall ornamental Corintian Pink peach tree fell over from one side of the root ball being ripped up. I could have avoided having to stake these trees in the windy cold conditions I experienced, if I had only staked them back in the warmer conditions when they were first planted.

Another tree which did really well was my Persion Perotia. It had not dropped its leaves yet and the ice bent it over to the ground. But once the ice melted, the tree is now standing tall and straight again. It is a young tree, and that might help account for it's lack of limb or trunk failure.

Yeah, Oklahoma has had it bad. We had it bad but not like OK.
I was just glad my electricity was back on when I got home from work, it will be nice to shower today (I have an electric water heater)!
I don't have any big trees in my yard right now.
It was January 2002 for a really bad ice storm in KCMO. That really stunk, I remember cleaning up this huge mess that took me several weeks.
It was all weak-wooded undesirable trees for me to clean up at the time (Silver Maples, Siberian Elm etc.).
Will
p.s. Notice the downed residential electrical line in there? His power was out for a week.
{{gwi:497086}}

Here is a link that might be useful: http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v243/w4i0a/icestorms%20and%20damage/

2002?? Good grief is time flying! It only feels like that was 3 pr 4 years ago! Maybe that's how traumatic it was to me? he he

shortleaf2002, that photo looks like the damage I see on many of the maples and other soft wood trees in our area. One of my oaks that is growing with a main leader trunk all the way up had lateral branches, growing off its trunk, broken about 4 feet way from the trunk. Non of them have stripped bark along the part of the branch which was not broken. Also none of the main leader trunk has bark stripped, off like seen on the modified leader trunk in your photo.

I am concerned that once all the broken branches of my oaks are pruned back to the break, the side branches will look pretty strange with the short lengths of branches which remain undamaged between where they attached to the trunk and the four feet further-out pruning.

My other 30 year old Shumard has a modified leader trunk starting about 8 feet up. On that tree, once the needed massive corrective pruning job is done, this might present a good time to try and shorten one of the leaders so a better main leader can develop. Of course the tree specialist, might tell me it is too late to try such a correction on the tree.

I have noticed that all three of my Shumard oaks are most heavily damaged on their north and northeast sides.

My Scarlet oak is not protected by any other trees or building on it's north, west or east sides. There is a two story house just 40 feet to the South of this oak, and an enormous cottonless cottonwood tree in the back yard of that neighbor's house, that cottonwood tree is southeast of my Scarlet oak, It does not make sense that the cottonwood or the two story house would have sheltered my Scarlet oak to prevent it from suffering damage. Especially since my 8-9 foot tall Green Giants growing near, in a East west line, but still just south of the Scarlet oak, collected so much ice that their tops bent over toward the north all the way to the ground from the weight of all that ice.

That indicates to me that my Scarlet also must have collected as much ice on its north and east sides as my Shumards. Still it's side branches that come off its main leader trunk did not break at all.

All around town, I see other shumard oaks with the same type of side branch damage as I have described mine. So that also leads me to think that the damage my shumards suffered was not specific to just my three shumards.

Late yesterday afternoon our electricity was restored, and we checked out of the hotel and returned home this morning. Since returning home, I have been busy cleaning out my refrigerator and doing laundry, my DH spent the day at work, and so we have not had time to do anything to the trees yet. Tomorrow it is predicted to rain and Saturday predicted to snow about 2-4 inches. Hopefully, if I am not being unrealist, we can at least do the corrective pruning on my damaged trees by next week, several days prior to Christmas.

Yeah, I agree kman. Has it been nearly 6 years already?! I remember then I was unemployed and I just spent my days outside cleaning up this mess for my grandmother (thats her brown/brick house in a photo in that link, with a Silver Maple that fell apart quite nicely on her fence and all over the yard).
Today, it looks like it never happened. Then, it looked like a terrible trajedy for the trees, but it was like Mother Nature pruned the trees mostly that way on purpose, they look as good as before. The trees that broke in half at the trunk couldn't have been planned I suppose by Ma Nature!
I bet you have your work cut out for you, katrina1, I'm sorry but I'm afraid I don't envy you!:)
I always got the impression that all the faster growing Red Oaks (ex. Shumard and Scarlet Oaks, pointy leaves) were the weaker wooded trees in Quercus, where-as the White Oaks (ex. Bur Oak, White Oak, rounded leaves) were generally the stronger wooded, longer lived trees. I'd say that the Scarlet Oak squeaking by like it did is just a fortunate coincidence.

shortleaf2002, the reference to the Silver Maple tree which was damaged looking as if MN had pruned it is pretty accurate.

There is a horrible 5 trunked Silver Maple in the neighbors yard next to the house we rent to my daughter. Over the last year, we saw so many branches breaking off that tree and falling onto our property every time the least amount of breezes or thunder storms blew through.

I am so very glad that late in the summer, I hired a tree specialist to bring out a bucket truck and to prune all the branches of that tree which had grown to spread over our property line. This expensive job saved us lots of loss by avoiding the damage those pruned away branches would have caused us during this recent ice storm. As it was only one branch fell and damaged one of my recently planted Foster holly trees and about 8 foot of our nearby fencing.

As it stands the ice storm broke off almost all the remaining branches of that tree. The five trunks now remain with only a few branches that are near the top of the tree undamaged. So many branches fell off that tree that part of the roof on that neighbor's house was covered and damaged, and both their entire front yard and just a little more than one lane of the residential street in front is covered with the fallen branches from that huge Silver Maple.

There is almost too much debris from these falling branches for anyone other than a tree removal company to clean up the yard. Hopefully the home owner will also take advantage, of the situation and have the rest of the tree removed. If this tree had only one main leader trunk, I might like to watch it recover from the damage on its own. But as is, it is my opinion that this 5 trunked, vine choked, silver maple is nothing more than a menace and hazard.

Shortleaf, the 2002 photo you posted certainly is a good visual showing why people should never top prune a tree.

Notice the mass of wild looking growth at the top of the tree's modified leader trunks. Poor tree; it's clear that even before the 2002 icing damage happened to it, the tree needed to be replace. Hopefully, by now that tree has been replace with a better cultivar of tree that grows in a manner and form which will not pose a threat of damage to the overhead power lines.

After the 2002 ice damage, did the public utility top prune it once again? Is the tree still alive?

Hi katrina,
Yes that tree is still there. Its never been pruned except by that storm. It covers the Southeast corner pretty well, so it probably gives them some decent shade in the Summer which all that matters for some I suppose. Its not as if the tree is ever really suffering, Silver Maples will grow like a weed anywhere. I also think they keep that tree so they can nail signs to it, the latest sign on it said "no trespassing". The zoom on my camera works from the street anyway! I think that I am a sort of "tree paparazzi"!