Trees, Surprised by Winter

By Vladimir Brezina

The snowstorm that came through New York City a couple of days ago wasn’t much as winter storms go. But it was so early—it’s nowhere near winter yet! New York City has had measurable snow in October only three times previously since records began in 1869, and this storm, dropping 2.9 inches in Central Park, set a new record by far.

The trees weren’t ready. They still had almost all their leaves—the fall colors haven’t even peaked yet in Central Park!—and the weight of the snow accumulating in the foliage brought down branches and whole trees everywhere.

In Central Park, clean-up crews assessed what some officials called the worst tree devastation they had ever seen. Douglas Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy, estimated that as many as 1,000 trees would be lost. Workers had only recently completed clean-up work from Tropical Storm Irene, which cost the park 125 trees, Mr. Blonsky said.

Much worse than Irene, and worse even than the intense thunderstorm that brought down hundreds of trees in August 2009.

The broken trees, in turn, brought down power lines in unusual quantities: 3 million people without power, possibly for days, throughout the Northeast…

The paths in Central Park were littered with broken trees when we ventured out during the storm

Before the storm had even passed, crews were pruning dangerous-looking branches on 5th Avenue

… but too late in some cases

This was a nice canoe…

Today, some of the same trees whose beautiful fall colors I photographed just a couple of days ago are gone, even though the colors still linger