For years, Tom raked the leaves under the big ash in his Keene backyard every fall. He knew that tree the way you know a piece of furniture. It was just there, part of the yard, something he worked around without ever really looking at it.
He never looked up. That was the thing. He kept his eyes on the rake and the tarp and the leaves, and the ash stood over all of it, quietly doing whatever the tree was doing.
Then one Saturday a neighbor wandered over, tipped his head back, and asked Tom how long that crack had been running up the trunk. Tom had to walk out into the yard and see for himself. Sure enough, a seam climbed the lower trunk, eight or nine feet of it, with a dark line of old wood showing through.
When he called us, the first thing he said was that he felt a little foolish. “It was right there the whole time,” he told us. The honest truth is that the tree had been telling him it was in trouble for years. He just had not known what he was looking at.
That is the part most Keene homeowners miss. Trees rarely fail out of nowhere. They give off warning signs, sometimes for a season, sometimes for years, before a storm finally finishes the job.
What follows is a walk through the signs we see most often in yards around the Monadnock region. The ones you can spot from the ground, with no special training, and the point where a warning sign stops being something to watch and becomes something to act on.
Why Some Keene Trees Come Down and Others Ride Out the Same Storm
After a big blow rolls through Keene, we get calls from one street where three trees are down, and nothing at all from a street two blocks over where everything is held. People tend to chalk it up to luck, as if the wind simply picked their tree. It almost never works that way. When two trees stand in the same soil under the same gusts and one fails while the other holds, the difference is almost always inside the tree that came down. It was already compromised. The storm just found the weak spot.
A healthy tree is a remarkably good piece of engineering. The roots anchor it, the trunk flexes, and the canopy spills wind instead of catching it like a sail. When all of those parts are sound, a tree can take a real beating and spring right back. Trouble starts when one of those systems has been quietly failing. Decay down in the roots, a crack in the trunk, a heavy one-sided canopy, or a bad joint where two stems meet. Any one of those can turn an ordinary storm into the one that finally brings the tree over.
The encouraging part is that these weak points show themselves. A root problem heaves the soil. A trunk problem opens a seam or a cavity. A canopy problem drops limbs and thins out on top. You do not need a ladder or a background in tree biology to catch most of them. You need to know what you are looking at, and you need to actually look, which is the step Tom skipped for three years running.
Ground-Level Warning Signs to Check After Any Keene Storm
The best time to walk your yard is the morning after a storm, while everything is still wet and freshly stressed. Start at the bottom. The roots and the soil around the base tell you more about whether a tree will stay standing than almost anything happening up in the branches. A tree can shed a few limbs and be fine. A tree with a failing root system is a different kind of problem, because the whole thing can go over at once.
Walk a slow circle around each of your larger trees. Look at the ground all the way out to where the branches reach, not just at the trunk. You are watching for anything that has changed since the last time you paid attention. Fresh soil movement, cracks in the ground, roots that look more exposed than they used to, mushrooms that were not there last month. Small changes at the base often mean big changes underground.
Soil Heaving and a New Lean
Most trees lean a little, and a lean the tree grew with over decades is usually nothing to lose sleep over. The lean that should get your attention is a new one. If a tree that stood more or less straight last year is suddenly tilting, something at the root has let go.
The tell is in the soil. When roots on one side start to fail and lift, they push the ground up with them. You will often see a low mound or a cracked, raised patch of soil on the side opposite the lean, where the root plate is levering up out of the ground. Sometimes the soil has pulled away from the trunk on the leaning side, leaving a gap. That combination, a fresh lean paired with heaved or cracked soil at the base, is about as clear a danger sign as there is. It means the anchor is coming loose, and the next hard wind may be all it takes. A tree like that needs eyes on it quickly.
Mushrooms and Conks at the Root Flare
Mushrooms scattered in the lawn are common and mostly harmless. Mushrooms or hard shelf-like growths right at the base of the trunk, on the root flare, or on the surface roots are a different story. Those fungi are not living on your tree so much as living off it. They feed on wood, and if they are fruiting at the base, they are usually feeding on the roots and lower trunk, the exact structure holding the whole tree up.
The hard, woody brackets people call conks are the ones we take most seriously. A conk on the root flare often means the decay inside is already well along, because the fungus has to eat through a good deal of wood before it fruits at all. Meanwhile the tree can still look full and green up top while the base is being hollowed out. That is the trap. Everything above looks fine, so nobody worries, while the foundation quietly gives way beneath it. If you find conks at the base of a tree in your Keene yard, have someone who knows what they are looking at take a look before storm season.
Trunk and Canopy Signs You Can Spot From the Ground
Once you have checked the base, work your way up. The trunk and the canopy carry their own set of warnings, and most of them are visible from the ground if you take a minute to really look instead of just glancing. This is the part Tom missed for years. The crack was there the whole time. He simply never tipped his head back and followed the trunk up.
Cracks, Seams, and Cavities in the Trunk
Not every mark on a trunk is a problem. Bark is rough, trees wear their history, and plenty of scars and bumps are purely cosmetic. The ones that matter are the ones that point to trouble with the tree’s structure. A vertical crack or a seam running up the trunk sits near the top of that list. It can mean the wood has split under load, or that two halves of the trunk are slowly pulling apart. A crack that runs deep, or one you can slip your fingers into, is telling you the trunk may not hold together in a strong wind.
Cavities and hollows are the other big one. A hole where a branch tore out years ago, an open pocket of soft or crumbling wood, a spot that sounds hollow when you knock on it. Trees are surprisingly good at living with some internal decay, and a hollow tree is not automatically a doomed tree. But the more of the trunk wall that is gone, the less wood there is to resist a storm. When a cavity wraps a large share of the way around, or the shell of solid wood left is thin, the margin gets dangerous fast. Pair a cavity with a crack or a lean and you have moved well past cosmetic. One more sign worth knowing is a tight, deep union where two stems meet with bark pinched between them. That included bark, as it gets called, makes for a weak joint that likes to split right when the wind is worst.
Dead Branches and a Thinning Canopy
Look up into the crown next. A few dead twigs are normal on any mature tree. What you are watching for is a pattern. Large dead branches, whole limbs with no leaves in the middle of summer, or bare gray wood standing out against the green are all deadwood, and deadwood is the tree telling you that parts of it have already given up. Those limbs can drop on their own in a storm even when the rest of the tree holds, which is its own hazard over a driveway, a roof, or a spot where people sit.
Then step back and look at the shape of the whole canopy. A healthy tree fills out fairly evenly and leafs top to bottom. A canopy that is thin and see-through at the top, or full on one side and sparse on the other, is a sign the tree is struggling to move water and food where it needs to go. Dieback that starts at the branch tips and works inward often points to root trouble down below, tying the top of the tree right back to the base you started with. Some thinning and deadwood can be caught early with the right tree trimming, which takes the dead weight out before a storm can use it. Other times the thinning is a sign the whole tree is on the way out, and pruning only puts off the harder decision.
When a Warning Sign Means Remove It Before the Next Storm
Here is the question everyone lands on eventually. When is a sign just something to keep an eye on, and when does it mean the tree needs to come down before the next storm rolls through Keene? There is no single rule that fits every tree, but there is a pattern we trust, and it comes down to how the signs stack up.
One modest sign on an otherwise solid tree is usually a watch-it situation. A single small cavity, a bit of deadwood, a lean the tree has carried for twenty years. Those are worth noting and worth checking again next season, but on their own they rarely mean immediate danger. Trees live with minor defects all the time.
The picture changes quickly when the signs start combining, especially when they line up on the same tree. A fresh lean with heaved soil at the base. A trunk crack sitting above a cavity. Conks at the root flare under a thinning canopy. When two or three of these show up together, they tend to feed on each other, and the odds of failure climb. That is the moment a tree moves from watch it to take it down, and doing it before the storm rather than after is the whole point. A planned removal happens on a calm day, on your schedule, with the crew in full control of where every piece lands. The same tree failing in a storm picks its own timing and its own landing spot, usually the worst one available.
Location weighs on the call as much as the tree itself. A flawed tree at the back of a wooded lot with nothing under it is a very different matter from the same tree leaning over a bedroom, a driveway, or the power line into the house. The closer the target, the less risk is worth carrying. When a tree with real defects stands within reach of something you care about, that alone can tip a watch-it tree into one worth taking down. When the signs are mixed and the stakes are high, a professional hazard assessment is what settles it, and that is exactly the kind of call our crew helps Keene homeowners make.
How Wilcox Tree Service Assesses a Risky Tree in Keene
When you have us out to look at a tree that has you worried, we run the same walk we just described, only with the eyes of a crew that has taken down a lot of trees and watched how they fail. We start at the ground and work up. Soil condition, root flare, the base for conks and cavities, the trunk for cracks and seams, the joints where stems meet, the canopy for deadwood and dieback. We look hard at what the tree is doing, and just as hard at what is standing underneath it.
A good deal of what we bring is the context that is tough to read from your own back porch. We know which species around the Monadnock region tend to hold and which tend to fail, how our soils behave once they are soaked after a long stretch of rain, and how the wind tends to load a tree on an exposed Keene lot. A crack or a lean does not read the same on every tree. Part of the job is telling the difference between a defect a tree can live with for years and one that has run out of room.
From there the goal is a straight answer, not a hard sell. Sometimes the tree is fine and we say so, and you get to stop worrying about it. Sometimes the fix is pruning out the deadwood and checking back next year. And sometimes the honest answer is that the tree has too much working against it to trust through another storm, and the safe move is to take it down before it comes down on its own. When that is the case, our crew handles the hazardous tree removal from planning through cleanup, in a controlled way that protects whatever is standing nearby. And if a tree ever fails suddenly after a storm, we keep a line open for emergencies 24/7, because those situations do not wait for business hours.
The trees in your yard have most likely been telling you how they are doing all along. The hard part is knowing which signs to trust and what to do about them, and that is where a second set of experienced eyes makes the difference. Not sure if a tree is safe? Call Wilcox Tree Service at 603-363-8197 for a hazard assessment before the next Keene storm.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What are the earliest warning signs a tree might fall in Keene, NH?
The earliest signs usually show up at the base and in the canopy. Watch for a new lean, soil that looks heaved or cracked on one side of the trunk, and roots that seem newly exposed. Up top, look for large dead branches and a canopy that is thinning or dying back from the tips inward. Mushrooms or hard conks at the root flare are another early flag, since they point to decay you cannot see. One small sign is usually a watch-it situation. Several signs on the same tree deserve a closer look before storm season.
- Does a leaning tree always need to be removed?
No. Plenty of trees have leaned the same way for decades and are perfectly stable, because they grew that way and their roots adjusted to match. The lean that worries us is a new one, especially when it arrives with heaved or cracked soil at the base or a gap opening up where the trunk meets the ground. That combination means the roots may be letting go. An old, steady lean on a sound tree is usually fine to leave alone, but a fresh lean is worth having checked quickly.
- Are mushrooms growing at the base of my tree a problem?
Mushrooms scattered in the lawn are normal and not a concern for your tree. The ones to take seriously are mushrooms or hard shelf-like conks growing right on the root flare, the surface roots, or the lower trunk. They feed on wood, and when they fruit at the base they are usually feeding on the roots and lower trunk that hold the tree up. The tree can still look green and full on top while the foundation decays. If you find conks at the base, have the tree looked at before the next storm.
- Can a tree that looks healthy still fail in a storm?
Yes, and this is the one that surprises people most. A tree can carry a full, green canopy while the roots or the inside of the trunk are badly decayed. Fungal decay and hollowing happen out of sight, so the top of the tree looks fine right up until the base or a weak joint gives way in a hard wind. That is exactly why the ground-level check matters so much. The signs at the base often tell the real story long before the leaves ever do.
- How do I know if a trunk crack is serious?
Depth and company are what matter. A shallow surface crack in the bark is often cosmetic. A crack that runs deep, that you can fit your fingers into, or that extends a long way up the trunk is a structural concern, because it means the wood may split under load. A crack also gets more serious when it pairs with other signs, such as a cavity below it, a lean, or a tight union with bark pinched inside. When a crack turns up alongside any of those, it is time to have the tree assessed rather than wait and see.
- Can Wilcox Tree Service assess whether my Keene tree is a hazard?
Yes. A hazard assessment is one of the most common reasons homeowners call us. We come out, check the tree from the roots to the canopy, weigh the defects against whatever is standing under the tree, and give you a straight answer about whether it is safe, worth pruning, or better taken down before it fails. If removal is the safe call, our crew handles it in a controlled way, and we are available 24/7 for trees that fail suddenly after a storm. Call us at 603-363-8197 to set up an assessment.