Blog | Seasonal Tree Care Guide
The trees that come down in a Burke storm are rarely chosen at random. Wind finds the tree that was already compromised — a split crotch, a dead leader, roots that never had room to spread — and finishes a job that started years earlier. The sound, well-pruned oak two doors down rides out the same gust without dropping a twig.
That is the useful thing about storm preparation. You cannot do anything about the weather, but the part of the outcome that depends on the tree is decided long before the first raindrop.
Failure usually traces back to a defect that was visible to someone who knew what to look for. North Carolina State Extension’s guidance on storm-damaged landscape trees, updated in January 2026, points to a consistent list of defects that make a tree likely to fail: co-dominant leaders, bark that is included in a crotch, cavities or hollow areas, girdling roots, decay from insects or disease, and damage left behind by earlier bad pruning such as flush cuts or topping.
Species matters too. The same guidance advises against trees with “brittle wood, weakly attached limbs, or spreading, codominant branches/trunks,” and favors upright, narrow crowns with fewer and thicker branches.
Two of these show up constantly in Burke yards. The first is the co-dominant stem — a tree that forks into two trunks of roughly equal size instead of keeping one central leader. Where those stems meet, bark often gets pinched between them rather than wood knitting together, and that seam is a crack waiting for a wind load. The second is the silver maple or Bradford pear planted as a fast-growing screen decades ago and now big enough to reach the roof, carrying exactly the brittle wood and weak attachments the list warns about.
They can, and around here they routinely do — but wind speed alone is a poor predictor. A sound, well-structured tree takes a great deal more than 50 mph. A tree with a decayed root collar can go over in far less.
What usually tips the balance is water. The worst tree damage here tends to come from summer thunderstorms that dump rain fast and then arrive with a gust front. Saturated soil loses its grip on the root plate, the canopy acts as a sail, and a tree that would have stood through a dry-ground gust lifts out instead. That is why one storm can leave a street untouched and flatten trees on the next one down the hill — and why the question worth asking is what shape your trees are in, not how hard the wind is forecast to blow.
You do not need to be an arborist to catch the obvious problems. Walk the yard in daylight, and look at each large tree from the base upward and then from a distance:
What you cannot judge from the ground is how much sound wood is left around a cavity, or how deep a crack runs. The Morton Arboretum recommends having large trees looked at by a certified arborist every three to five years, and that cadence is about right for a mature canopy over a house. When something on your walk-around gives you pause, a structural assessment by a certified arborist settles it before the weather does.
Removing dead, dying, diseased, and damaged limbs is the most productive thing you can do to a mature tree ahead of storm season. Deadwood comes down first and does the damage to roofs and cars. Beyond that, structural pruning reduces end weight on overextended limbs and improves the way a canopy sheds wind.
What does not work — and actively makes trees more dangerous — is topping. Cutting a canopy back to stubs triggers a flush of weakly attached regrowth and opens large wounds that decay from the inside. A topped tree looks smaller for two seasons, then becomes a worse storm risk than it was before. Lion-tailing, stripping interior foliage and leaving tufts at the branch tips, is the same mistake in another shape: it moves the weight to the end of the lever.
The distinction matters enough that it is worth insisting on pruning done to arboricultural standard rather than by whoever knocked on the door after the last storm.
Much of Burke was built out between 1960 and the early 1980s, and many of those streets still carry overhead distribution lines with service drops running across back yards. That puts a lot of mature canopy within reach of energized wire.
The division of responsibility surprises people. Dominion Energy maintains clearance along its own distribution and transmission lines, but for the service line to an individual house it trims “only limbs that vigorously rub against the service line” and does “not cut down live or dead trees.” Larger limbs, trunks and debris remain the property owner’s. Virginia’s High Voltage Safety Act also requires you to contact Dominion Energy before work happens near those lines, and the utility is blunt that untrained people should not attempt trimming near them at all.
So the limb over the wire to your house is your tree and your problem — but not one to solve with a pole saw. If a limb is touching a line, that call goes to the utility first.
Rolling Valley West is typical of Burke: a subdivision laid out in the suburban build-out, planted all at once, and carrying a canopy that has therefore reached structural maturity all at once too. Trees planted together age together, so when one white oak on a street starts shedding limbs, its neighbors are usually the same age, the same species, and carrying the same defects.
It is also a neighborhood of long back yards running onto woods, which changes the failure pattern. A tree that grew up inside a stand has a tall, drawn trunk and a small crown, and it relied on its neighbors for shelter. Clear a few of those, or lose them in a storm, and the survivors are suddenly exposed to wind they never grew to handle. Edge trees along a wood line deserve a closer look than the specimen oak alone in the lawn.
We have worked yards across the Burke corner of our service area since 2001, and the route from Rolling Valley West Park on Sydenstricker Road to our office runs about fifteen minutes:
Some trees cannot be pruned into safety. A substantially hollow trunk, a root plate already lifting, a large dead tree over a house — at that point the honest recommendation is a planned removal on a clear day, when the crew can rig it down in controlled pieces.
The alternative is the same tree coming apart at two in the morning across a roof or a power line. Removing it on your schedule is safer and far less disruptive than letting the storm pick the timing. When it does go the other way, emergency crews after the wind stops are the ones to call rather than a chainsaw in the garage — storm-loaded wood is under tension and injures people who cut it casually.
Can a storm-damaged tree be saved?
Often, yes. A tree that lost a few limbs but kept most of its canopy, with an intact trunk and root plate, usually recovers with clean restorative pruning. The ones that do not come back lost more than about half the canopy, split down the trunk or through a main union, or lifted at the roots. A split trunk is rarely repairable, whatever the tree looked like the week before.
What is the 10/20/30 rule for trees?
It is a diversity guideline from urban forestry: no more than 10 percent of a planting should be one species, 20 percent one genus, or 30 percent one family. The point is resilience — a street planted entirely in one species loses its whole canopy to one pest or one storm. It applies just as well to a property with room for several trees.
Should you stay away from trees in a thunderstorm?
Yes. Sheltering under a tree is one of the more dangerous places to be in a lightning storm, because current can jump from the struck tree to a person beside it. Get inside a building or a hard-topped vehicle and leave the tree assessment for afterwards.
How far from power lines should a new tree be planted?
Give it real room. The Morton Arboretum’s guidance is not to plant within 20 feet of a power line unless the tree is naturally small, and to allow at least 50 feet for a large shade tree. Getting this right at planting is the cheapest storm preparation there is.
If something in your yard did not look right on the walk-around — a fork you do not like, a dead top, a lean newer than you remember — it is worth a professional opinion while the weather is calm. Call (703) 569-2570 and we will come take a look.
G & V Tree Service Inc
6434 Brandon Ave Suite 204
Springfield, VA 22150
(703) 569-2570
Somewhere in a Kingstowne back yard there is an oak that forks...
The trees that come down in a Burke storm are rarely chosen...
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