widowmakers!

[egilbe]

And, for what it's worth, the vast majority of trees fall at moments of higher than average stress, i.e. during strong storms. With my experience, I would suggest that if you can stay out of the forest during the strongest storms of the year, your risk of seeing, hearing, or being hit by a falling tree is exceptionally low.

Also, as I'm thinking about this, I see a lot more freshly downed trees in deciduous forests than I do in coniferous forests. That can only be true mathematically if the conifers live noticeably longer and/or there is a higher number of trees per given area in a deciduous forest. And, I would argue against deciduous trees being more dense, on average then conifers, at least until the conifer forest is matured into old-growth

In conifer forests of the Pacific Northwest "widowmakers" were dead branches on trees, not whole trees.

Okay, as per one Google source, Douglas fir trees apparently live, on average, for 750 years and can reach 1200 years and that's a heck of a lot older than any of the deciduous trees in my New England back yard that seem to fall at ridiculous rates.

In our neck of the woods, most of the old, healthy trees were logged off not that long ago. The organic soil those old trees might have become if they had fallen naturally got carried away. What was left was slash that burned. The soil was then rained on and was washed down the Saco and Androscoggin rivers. What was left can barely support an unhealthy forest. If you hike up the Wild River Wilderness and look at the flanks of the Carter-Moriah range, even though it's tree covered now, you can see the gullies down the flanks of the mountains caused by erosion. They are pretty dramatic. The White Mountains doesn't really have a healthy forest.

[Gambit McCrae]

I tented with the Union soldiers at Sheltons Grave last weekend down here in East Tn and man o man were there ever dead limbs hanging everywhere. I was able to find a spot safe to tent but that place could sue a solid day of cutting dead stuff down.