As far as brutal weather goes, I walked away from a job this past saturday, partly due to weather.
Two 60' x 36" DBH locusts over a trailer at a campgrounds. The owner of the campgrounds wanted them out, as they were dead and rotted. 3 big spars on the one, 5 on the other, mostly vertical growth. The tree closest to the trailer had been hit by lightning, and thats what must have issued the coup de grace. The one farther away had a substantial portion of it's root mass underneath the road, which was a main access road to the campgrounds, so that coupled with insect infestation killed the tree, IMO.
I climbed the one closest to the trailer first. Some bark peeling at the base, but solid wood underneath. It was sunny when I started.
After removing 2/3 of the first tree with my uber-green groundie (aka the guy that batches concrete for me at my full-time-gig) the wind picked up fierce, to 40+ mph, and it started to rain hard. The forecast was partly cloudy with 0% precip. guess they were wrong, but we WERE working in beautiful Mount Storm, WV...
I had to put a ratchet strap around the tree, as it was blowing all over the place from the wind, causing the split from the lightning strike in the base to open and close with each gust. The tree was more rotted up top then at the base, anyone else ever experience this? Most I have seen are worse down on the ground, with stable, though mostly dead, wood up top.
The insect damage seemed to be from carpenter ants, as they were all over the tree as I was doing the removal. At 30 ft up, the only thing holding the tree up was heartwood, with 2-3 inches of rot all around, and bark peeling. Not much purchase for my spurs. There was zero green wood, so between the wind, and knowing that my hinges weren't going to hold, I called it off.
I gotta go back and drop the rest when the weather will cooperate. As long as I can muster the balls to get up those rotten devils again.
I told the campgrounds owner to look into someone with a bucket, as I may not be able to safely take them down while climbing. I definately do not want to rig off these trees, as they are substantially more rotted than I first expected, and there is nothing close enough to rig to, and the spar over top of the trailer must be pieced out, it cannot be dropped due to lean.
T