Big gusts are expected to hit the Lodi area

As street crews just finished cleaning up debris last Friday from the Oct. 13 storm, another wind storm is supposed to blow through today.

Winds will start whirling leaves around 10 to 15 mph in the morning, said meteorologist Andy Mussoline, of the private forecast service AccuWeather.

The gusts will start blowing from the north to northwest at 25 to 30 mph throughout the afternoon with some gusts reaching 45 mph. The high will be 68 degrees with partly sunny skies.

The wind will begin to die down after 5 p.m., but continue blowing throughout the early morning.

Even though it will be windy, Curt Juran, assistant streets superintendent, said he does not believe there will be nearly as much damage as the last storm.

The reason so many trees and limbs fell on Oct. 13 is because the rain and leaves weighed down the limbs, Juran said.

He said there is still a risk of limbs falling on Tuesday, but he does not expect many trees to fall because they were knocked out by the last storm.

Partially in response to the last storm, the city's Electric Utility Department plans to educate the public more about the importance of tree trimming, said City Manager Blair King.

"Our primary objective is to make sure trees don't negatively impact the reliability of our electric system," he said.

The city does two types of tree trimming. One is based out of the Electric Utility and focuses on trimming trees around power lines, and another is based out of Public Works and focuses on all the other trees in the city.

During the last storm, a tree caught on fire somewhere north of Turner Street, causing 173 customers to lose power for 55 minutes.

"It was the physical manifestation of what happens when a tree gets too close to a power line," he said. "It made us think maybe we should be a little bit more aggressive."

Because of past complaints from the public, the city has sometimes done minimal trimming of trees near power lines, but he said that is no longer sustainable.

In the past, the city would trim trees and then have to come back in six months to trim them again. He said now the city will focus on trimming the tree so city crews won't have to come back for a year or more.

He hopes the public will understand why the utility is getting more aggressive with the trimming. The city is exploring options of how to inform the public, such as including notices in the Electric Utility's newsletter.

"It requires a good, firm, common understanding of the dangers of not pruning or trimming the tree," he said.

Because of the Oct. 13 storm, 17 large city trees and five smaller ones had to be removed, Juran said. The damage included 13 trees on South Church Street.

"Those were probably on our list to remove anyway, but God took care of it for us," he said.

Considering the conditions, the amount of damage was less than what he expected. He attributes that to the city's grid pruning system, which was implemented in 2007.

"Grid pruning turned out to be quite a successful economic way to maintain the city's urban forest," he said.

The city is divided into about 18 grids, and each year the city contracts with West Coast Arborists to trim all of the trees in the grid. The Electric Utility has a separate contract to target trees near power lines. The grid system helps save the city money on trees on public property because they are providing consistent, pre-planned work for the contractor, so the cost per tree comes down, he said.

"We've been able to do a little bit more with less money," Juran said.

Still, Public Works has had to cut back on the trimming because of budget cuts. In the first two years of the program, the city paid the contractor to do three grids, which would corresponded with all city trees being trimmed in seven years.

But in the most recent fiscal year, which started July 1, the city only had enough to do two grids, which could push the whole program to nine years, Juran said.

In conversations, Juran said, he has heard other cities without as aggressive tree trimming procedures had more trees fall on Oct. 13.

Besides doing the grid trimming, the city also is careful how far they trim the tree using guidelines from the American Horticultural Society.

"We don't butcher the trees like we used to," Juran said.

Contact reporter Maggie Creamer at maggiec@lodinews.com. Read her blog at www.lodinews.com/blogs/citybuzz.

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