Hurricane Ike knocked down trees from Texasto Northern New York over the weekend. Here in central Kentucky, we had no rain, but strong winds up to 60 mph knocked down trees throughout the region. Falling trees knocked down power lines, leaving more than 39,000 homes without power, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

I looked at many downed trees and broken limbs this morning around Lexington. All of the downed trees that I saw had major stem defects and all of the broken limbs had significant decay. Although we often blame power outages on downed trees during storms, we really should blame downed neglected trees. In a major storm, like Ike in Houston, even healthy trees will be broken or uprooted. However, in more moderate winds, most of the trees that fall or break have major decay and other defects. The power outages and economic loss in many storm-damaged communities represents the long-term cost of deferred maintenance on city forests.

Update:  According to Governor Steve Beshear, more than 550,000 Kentuckians were without power Sunday, including 90% of northern Kentucky customers of Duke Energy.

Cross posted at Sustainable Kentucky/Green Kentucky and Tree Trends.