April 14th, 2013

The Grand River Conservation Authority put out a warning on Friday for their staff to stay out of forests.  They warned that trees might experience “sudden catastrophic failure.”

Here is evidence of that. We had 5 trees in our sugar bush come down at Laurel Creek. All 5 were close together, and had their roots pulled out of the ground. The ground was saturated with water, and the big trees couldn’t handle the extra weight of ice and the force of the wind. If your class studies “forces acting on structures,” this would make an interesting case study.