Last weekend’s weather is some of the worst December weather I can remember. Prayers go out to those people who lost everything in Kentucky, Arkansas and beyond.

Locally, Saturday night there was high wind and many power outages. Some of these were due to the wind, while others were man-made outages. I lost power about ten times Saturday night, none more than about thirty seconds. Just long enough to quiet the fan I use for some white noise to help me sleep and wake the dogs up with the stove and microwave beeping when the power came back on.

So needless to say, I was a little sleep deprived on Sunday when I drove into work. Surprisingly there wasn’t any major trees down on the back roads that I take to work, but one thing I noticed was all the trees and limbs laying on electric lines. These aren’t new trees and limbs, they have been laying on lines for years.

With constant cutbacks on manpower, many roads haven’t been cleared of hanging limbs and such for many years. Kortright Road in the Town of Thompson has three separate tree tops that have snapped off and have been laying on the power lines for over five years now and one tree leaning on the line pushing it five feet out of line since last year.

Now these are all natural problems when you live in the country, but over the last forty years I have noticed trees that people planted that have completely overgrown the power lines by their houses or even worse the lines going to their house. The reason the latter is worse is this, if a tree comes down between your house and your closest power pole, most likely besides the line coming down it will also rip the service box off the side of your house and do other damage.

This happened to my parent’s house many years ago when they had a house on Dwyer Avenue in Liberty after a severe storm went through. One of the huge spruce trees that used to line the street snapped in half during the storm, taking down the power line going to the house and ripping the electrical service box completely off the building causing almost five thousand dollars in damages and that was ten years ago or so.

These days the price for repairs would be much higher. So plan on trees getting taller and do not put them anywhere where they can affect your power lines. Also if you are the only one without power, you are not a priority for the electric company. So keep your trees clear of your lines even if you need to call a tree service. Their fee will be a lot less than the damage that a fallen tree can cause.

Between high winds, severe thunderstorms and eventually snowstorms, trees and limbs will come down. But with a little fore-thought, you can mitigate the damage when they do.