Native trees more resilient to monsoon winds, according to experts
TUCSON, Ariz. (13 News) - If you’ve been out and about the last few days, chances are you’ve seen a tree down in the Tucson area.
The storm Sunday night was uniquely powerful, but could the trees themselves and the way they were planted play a part in why they were toppled?
Adam Farrell-Wortman, Director of Horticulture with Tucson Botanical Gardens, said native trees, like Mesquite and Palo Verde trees, are more resilient to monsoon wind because they’ve evolved to better handle the storms.
The issue comes with where they’re planted, how they’re watered, and if the tree is truly native.
“The Desert Museum Palo Verde that did not evolve from our monsoons, Chilean Mesquites, and other mesquite species from South America that also did not evolve with our monsoon storms,” said Farrell-Wortman. “We see a lot of those knocked down.”
He told 13 News there are several reasons why so many trees came down during Sunday’s storm, including how they’re planted.
“There has to be space for the tree to anchor down, so a lot of the trees that we’re seeing uprooted are in places where there wasn’t enough soil for the tree to anchor itself in the ground.”
Winds from Sunday’s storm were also just uniquely powerful and sometimes in that situation, there’s nothing that can be done.
“When the storms, due to climate change, are stronger and also due to our built environment, we get these stronger wind tunnels to some degree. We can’t prevent it. Gale force winds are going to cause damage.”
With the excessive heat we’ve been seeing this summer, we can also expect that wind to stick around.
“When we have storms that have those large swings in temperatures, those cold air masses coming down, it’s going to produce more significant winds and what we call gust fronts and outflow winds,” said Chelsea Peters with the National Weather Service Tucson.
If you’re one of the many people who lost your tree to the storm, Farrell-Wortman suggests replacing it.
“You want to make sure you’re getting a Velvet Mesquite. That’s our native mesquite here and care-wise, if we’re watering your mesquite, we want to make sure you’re watering it slow and deep.”
The reason for that is mesquites have a taproot that can go 15 feet deep. Those deeper roots will help keep it where it’s at in the case we get another really big storm.
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