Carnage

I find that most weather reporting is overblown, and I've started to disregard much of it. Like the boy who cried wolf. Last week they were forecasting that the weekend would be nasty; feet of snow followed by rain and freezing rain. Well, they got a third right, the weekend was grey and a bit drizzly, but Monday we did get about 6-8 hours of rain alternating with freeing rain. The two large trees outside our sun porch (aka the studio) lost a lot of branches in a very short time. Three large branches came down right where we park the truck usually, but we did have the forethought to move the truck to a safer location when it started to look bad. The first branch came down four minutes later. Another branch took out the clothes line. There are still three or four 'widow makers' in the crown just hanging there waiting to fall in the next wind storm. I got out the step ladder and my pruning saw to cut them out but couldn't reach up high enough. I only managed to cut of the the bits trailing down that would hit the truck as it passed under.
This is a species of tree that is known for being messy with falling twigs. It is called a Chinese Elm in these parts, but the bark description doesn't fit the two species of tree with that common name. I think it's really an upright habit of a Siberian Elm, Ulmus pumila, but I've never been completely certain. At any rate, I like the shade these provide my south windows in the summer, but they will need replacing sooner rather than later, especially if we get another ice storm. So sad.
I will have to call my arborist friend Tony to come back and clean up the broken jagged branches left way up in the canopy.