Emergency tree service in Minden, NV

Minden is a town of shade trees on a cold valley floor. Its weather station records more snow than Carson City's and colder winter nights, and broad-crowned street and yard trees are the ones that pay for it.

At a glance

• Minden station: 21.8 inches of snowfall a year, against 14.0 at the Carson City station
• Average winter low at the Minden station: 19.9 degrees
• About 26 minutes from our yard without traffic
• Storm debris collected and disposed of

Why does snow break more limbs in Minden than you would expect?

NOAA's 1991-2020 normals for the Minden station, half a mile from the center of town, show 21.8 inches of snowfall a year. The Carson City station shows 14.0. Minden's average winter low is 19.9 degrees, five degrees colder than Carson City's. The town is in USDA hardiness zone 6b.

The damage comes at the edges of the season. An early snow that lands while leaves are still on, or a late one after they have come out, puts weight on every twig. Broad deciduous trees with long side limbs split at the forks. Evergreens that were never thinned shed whole limbs. The morning after, heavy wet snow and broken limbs tells you what to leave alone.

What counts as an emergency?

Not every broken branch needs a night call. These do:

• A tree or large limb on a house, garage, vehicle or fence with animals behind it
• A tree across a driveway or street that blocks people in
• A split trunk or a large limb that is cracked and still hanging over a place people walk
• A tree that has started to lean since the storm, with the soil lifting on one side

If a power line is in the picture, it is NV Energy's emergency first and ours second. A pile of small limbs on the lawn can wait for office hours, Monday to Friday 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, and a free estimate.

How we take a tree off a house in town

On a town lot, fences, sheds and neighbors' roofs are all inside the reach of a mature tree. Cutting a trunk loose and letting it roll is how a second roof gets damaged. Our crane lifts the tree away in sections and sets each one down where the chipper and loader can get to it. The crane, the 75-foot boom truck and the rest of the fleet are our own, so there is no rental to wait on.

A certified arborist assesses the job before work begins, including what the rest of the tree is likely to do once the weight comes off.

What happens once the yard is clear?

Emergency work makes the place usable again. The follow-up is ordinary tree care: grinding the stump, removing dead wood from the trees that stayed up, and pruning to take weight off long limbs before next winter. Pruning timing is covered in best time to prune trees in Northern Nevada.

If you plan to claim on insurance, take photos before anything is moved. Your insurer decides what is covered.