Storm Season: Preparing Your Melbourne Trees for Wind Damage

Melbourne's spring storm season reliably brings down limbs, branches and whole trees across the eastern suburbs every year. The September to November period is the worst — trees still heavy with new spring growth, wet soil reducing root anchorage, and the sudden strong winds that come through with the first proper cold fronts of the season.

The good news: most storm damage is predictable, and most of it is preventable. If you've got mature trees on your property — particularly large eucalypts or older deciduous trees — here's what to think about before storm season hits.

Which Trees Cause the Most Problems in Melbourne Storms

Over many years of emergency callouts in Melbourne's east, a clear pattern emerges. The most common storm casualties are:

• Large eucalypts with excessive end-weight — particularly yellow box, spotted gum and lemon-scented gum across Doncaster, Templestowe, Balwyn, Ashburton and Glen Waverley. Long horizontal limbs loaded with foliage are very wind-exposed
• Liquid ambers with co-dominant stems — common in Hawthorn, Kew and Camberwell. The weak V-shaped forks often fail under wind load
• Mature pines and cypresses — particularly older specimens in Toorak, Malvern and Armadale with compromised root systems from adjacent construction
• Heritage oaks and elms with deadwood — strong trees but brittle dead branches are the first to drop
• Any tree on a windward slope — elevated properties in Doncaster, Templestowe and Glen Iris see higher failure rates simply due to exposure

Late Winter Is the Right Time for Preparation

The best time to prepare your trees for storm season is July through August — well before spring growth kicks in, while trees are still dormant enough for pruning to be low-stress, and before the ground becomes saturated by spring rains.

Three specific services we recommend at this time of year:

1. Dead Wood Removal

Every mature tree accumulates deadwood — branches that have died from shading, disease or age. In still conditions these hang in place for years. In a 60-80km/h gust they're the first things to fall. A thorough deadwood removal won't make the tree look different, but it meaningfully reduces storm risk.

2. Crown Weight Reduction

For large eucalypts particularly, strategic reduction of end-weight on long lateral limbs dramatically reduces the leverage wind can exert. This isn't topping or lion's-tailing — done properly, it's a subtle shortening of the longest branches by 10-20%, redistributing load back toward the trunk. A good arborist can do this in a way that's invisible from the ground but structurally transformative.

3. Cabling and Bracing for High-Value Trees

For heritage trees with known structural concerns — co-dominant stems with bark inclusion, large limbs over structures, valuable specimens we don't want to lose — installing steel or synthetic cables between major limbs can prevent catastrophic failure. This is a specialist job and it's worth paying for on a tree you want to keep for another 30 years.

What to Check Yourself Before Storm Season

You can do a useful preliminary assessment yourself. Walk around each significant tree on your property and look for:

• Cracks or splits at major branch unions — particularly in the Y-shaped forks of liquid ambers, oaks and maples
• Dead branches — easy to spot in winter because they've got no leaves and often no bark. If you can see clearly dead branches over your house, garage, car or pool, get them down before spring
• Mushroom growth on the trunk or at the base — a strong sign of internal decay that can compromise structural integrity
• Recent lean — if a tree that was vertical last year is now noticeably leaning, something's happened to the root plate. This is urgent
• Exposed or lifted roots — particularly if the soil around them has cracked or heaved recently
• Nearby construction or excavation — any digging within the drip line of a mature tree in the last 12-18 months may have compromised root stability

If you notice any of these issues, don't wait for the first storm to see what happens. A pre-storm assessment is always cheaper than a post-storm emergency callout — and much cheaper than a tree through your roof.

Insurance and Storm Damage

One thing worth knowing: most home insurance policies in Australia don't cover damage from your own tree falling on your own house if the tree was in obvious poor health before the storm. "Obvious poor health" includes major deadwood, visible decay, or previous arborist reports flagging concerns.

If an arborist has recommended work and you haven't done it, insurers can and do decline claims. The reverse is also true: if you have a recent arborist report showing the tree was assessed as healthy, and it still comes down in a storm, claims generally get paid without drama.

So there's a genuine financial case — not just a safety case — for getting your trees looked at before storm season. A documented assessment costs less than the excess on most insurance policies.

Emergency Response When Storms Hit

Even with the best preparation, some damage is inevitable in severe weather. If a tree or large limb comes down on your property:

1. Stay clear — downed trees can be under tension and snap back violently when cut. Don't try to remove anything yourself, particularly near power lines
2. Call your insurer early to understand what documentation they need
3. Photograph everything before any clean-up work starts
4. Call a qualified arborist — not a general handyman. Storm-damaged trees are genuinely dangerous work

We offer emergency response seven days a week during storm season for our existing clients and for new emergency callouts across Boroondara, Stonnington, Manningham and surrounding council areas. Generally we can be on site within 2-4 hours of a call during business hours, and same-day for most after-hours emergencies.

But again — it's always better to prevent the problem than respond to it. If you've got trees you're concerned about, get us out in July or August for an assessment. Send a photo and your suburb and we'll take a look.