Winter has ended dramatically across Australia’s southern states, as fierce winds and storms usher in spring.
Over the weekend, intense winds from a powerful cold front brought down trees, damaged powerlines, brought flooding rains and caused power outages for thousands of people. Gusts nearing 200 kilometres per hour were recorded in Tasmania. In southern New South Wales, a woman died after a tree fell on her holiday park cabin.
As southerners inspect the damage today, many of us will be looking anxiously at the trees we live next to – and wondering if they, too, could fall.
The good news is there are things you can do to make sure the trees near you are still safe.
These tips aren’t just for windstorm safety. As the climate changes, tree dieback is becoming more common. This year, we’ve seen large-scale dieback in south-west Western Australia and Tasmania. It’s increasingly important to keep tabs on large trees near you.
#1: Look down
When a whole tree falls over and pulls out its roots, it’s known as whole tree failure or “windthrow”. If this happens, it can be a major threat to you or your house.
There are often warning signs a tree might topple over even before a storm hits. On a windy day, look at the tree you’re worried about. Is there any sign of movement at the base of the tree and its visible roots? If so, call an arborist to come as quickly as possible to assess the risk.
If large, dead branches are attached to the trunk, that’s dangerous. These branches – “hangers” – can be blown loose and be carried surprisingly far from the tree in strong winds. They’re also more likely to break during storms and strong winds than healthy branches.
To reduce your risk, it’s important to have these dead branches removed. The bigger the dead branch, the higher the risk. But small dead branches in a canopy are normal. These pose much less threat and can usually be left there.
#3. Inspect the junctions
Not all limb attachments are healthy or strong. If the place where the limb is attached looks damaged, it could mean the junction is weak and could fail. To check, look for signs of damage – loose bark, resin or sap on the bark or branch, or bark which has become much darker than usual.
Some junctions are riskier than others. Trunks and branches with steep V-shape junctions, or with fallen bark built up between them, are more likely to break during storms.
If your tree rapidly loses foliage colour or suffers dieback of branches and canopy, this can also be a warning sign. These changes show us the tree is stressed and its health is getting worse. Sick trees are more vulnerable to storm damage.
Look for yellow and brown leaves, dead shoot tips and large branch dieback from their tips and dead patches on large limbs.
#5. Check the roots
Let’s say an excavator accidentally cuts one of your tree’s major structural roots with a diameter 100 mm or bigger. If this happens, it could risk the entire tree. Roots can also be damaged if the soil around them become compacted or waterlogged. These situations can weaken a tree from below.
To spot these issues, look for evidence of trenches where workers have cut through roots. Even when covered over, trenches will usually seem lower than the surrounding soil. Look for where soil has been compacted by vehicles or regular foot traffic. For waterlogging, look to see if water pools around trunks and under trees.
Root damage can be harder to spot, but damage underground can also trigger branch breakage or whole tree failure.
#6. Double check your lopped trees
If your tree has been badly pruned or lopped, it can become a threat. Poor work can trigger the growth of poorly attached shoots around the cuts or branch stubs. These shoots are more likely to fall during strong winds.
When the shoots are small, they don’t matter. But they can grow very quickly. Once more than 150 mm in diameter or ten metres long, they pose real risks.
Look for branching shoots which look different. Their branch attachment may look strange, or there may be multiple shoots from the same place on the trunk or stem. These shoots often grow almost vertically and grow at a much faster rate than normal branches.
#7. Check your canopy
If a large old trees dies or falls over, it can leave a large gap that changes local wind speed and intensity.
When trees are removed along roads, tracks and from around properties, canopy cover falls and wind speeds generally increase. This can be a real problem for your other trees, as they’re now enduring stronger winds than they were used to. It’s sensible to monitor your remaining trees in these circumstances.
Intense winds are projected to arrive more often in many parts of Australia as the climate keeps changing. This, in turn, will affect the trees we live close to.
It’s becoming more common to see householders pushing to remove large trees to reduce risk. But this comes with new challenges. With big trees gone, the wind speed near you will increase.
Big trees also offer unmatched cooling in summer. And while tree horror stories make the news, the vast majority of trees remain safely anchored in the ground during intense storms.
It’s entirely understandable to get anxious about big trees near your home. But rather than reaching for the chainsaw, it’s worth booking in regular tree inspections by a qualified arborist every three to five years to give reassurance or take action to reduce the risk.
Gregory Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In an interview from jail in Greenland with the AFP news agency, the anti-whaling activist said Tokyo has a vendetta against him
Anti-whaling activist Paul Watson has said that authorities in Tokyo are seeking to make an example of him, as he awaits a possible extradition to Japan, while in detention in a Greenland prison.
Speaking to the AFP news agency, the 73-year-old US-Canadian campaigner said his time behind bars has not prevented him from continuing his fight to save whales.
Heavy winds struck south-east Australia over the weekend as a series of cold fronts moved across the continent. It followed a high fire danger in Sydney and other parts of New South Wales last week, and a fire in south-west Sydney that threatened homes.
The severe weather rounds out a weird winter across Australia. The nation’s hottest ever winter temperature was recorded when Yampi Sound in Western Australia reached 41.6C on Tuesday. Elsewhere across Australia, winter temperatures have been way above average.
We can look to the positives: spring flowers are blooming early, and people have donned t-shirts and hit the beach. But there’s a frightening undercurrent to this weather.
Earth’s climate has become dangerously unstable, and it’s only a matter of time before we get the bad combination of hot and dry weather, strong winds and a spark. None of this should come as a surprise. The sooner we stop expecting Australia’s weather to be “normal”, the sooner we can prepare for life in a wild climate.
The green is deceiving
The landscape around Sydney – and in fact, across much of south-east Australia – is very green at the moment. That’s because we’ve had a couple of years of good rains which triggered an explosion of vegetation growth.
The below NASA satellite image reveals the picture in stark detail. It’s certainly lush out there at the moment.
But the problem with climate change is that weather conditions can turn on a dime. This August was a case in point. At month’s end, much of Australia was hit by a record-breaking heatwave and damaging winds – conditions that can dry out a green landscape with devastating efficiency, turning it into fuel for a bushfire.
The dangerous fire weather that struck Sydney this week came as a surprise to many. But in reality, these abnormal conditions are the new normal.
We must open our minds to this, if we want to be prepared.
This climate instability is setting up bad fire conditions. Not everywhere in south-east Australia will be hit by fire, but it will happen somewhere. It could be the hinterlands or the coast. It will depend on how our erratic climate behaves in the coming months.
Let’s stick with the Tasmania example. Sure, the surface soils are now nicely saturated. But that will lead to a burst of grass and other vegetation in spring. If the dry weather returns and the temperatures heat up in summer, the fine fuels will dry out and become dangerously combustible.
All we need then is a windy day and a spark, and a nightmare fire will soon be racing across the landscape.
Canada on fire
Of course, Australia is not the only country facing climate instability and a worsening fire risk.
Canada suffered a catastrophic wildfire season in 2023 – one of the most severe on record. It burnt almost 15 million hectares and forced the evacuation of 232,000 people.
Smoke produced by the fires affected communities up to 1,000 km away, such as in southern Canada and on the east coast of the United States.
A recent paper in the journal Nature Communications outlined why. It pinpointed early snowmelt, early-season drought conditions and intense heat. In fact, the average temperature in Canada from May to October last year was 2.2°C higher than the 30-year average.
The researchers said human-caused climate change exacerbated the fire’s effects. It went on:
The disproportionate effect a few days of extreme weather can have on the total area burned is also evident in this fire season, leading to worrisome prospects given projected future conditions.
Normal no longer exists
It’s always been difficult to forecast fire seasons in Australia, due to our natural climate variability.
But now we are seeing climate instability layering over itself: background dryness, wet seasons bringing a proliferation of fuels, and above-average temperatures.
Eventually we’ll get unlucky and experience extremely strong winds thrown into the mix. That’s when catastrophic fires are most likely to occur.
As we saw in the Black Summer of 2019–20, and again in Canada last year, some fires are so intense they completely overwhelm fire suppression strategies.
Under climate change, the likelihood of getting a bad combination of weather conditions is increasing. So what’s the remedy?
Australia really must start making our communities more resilient. Serious and sustained adaptation is needed. As my research has outlined, this requires the careful integration of:
community education programs
research and development to design fire-safe homes, gardens, communities and bushland
incentives and penalties to ensure adaptation measures are implemented.
As this winter has shown, Australia’s climate is entering a different phase. It’s time to give up on “normal” weather. The game is changing and we have to adapt.
David Bowman receives funding from Australian Research Council and Natural Hazards Research Australia.
Experts, marine conservation groups and an MP are urging the New South Wales government to ban anti-shark nets, which kill large numbers of turtles and dolphins, after 51 nets were installed along the state’s coastline.
