Save a Forest in Southworth, WA

Southworth Forest Update:

Worst Season of Wind Damage in Years Hits Southworth Forest

Posted December 17, 2024 by Southworth Forest

The "bomb cyclones" of November and December, 2024 caused windsnap on the big leaf maples and red alders across the Southworth Forest. Numerous 60 to 70-year-old trees of substantial size have been lost despite being defoliated by the time the storms hit.

The last three months of 2024 have brought extensive wind damage to the trees of the Southworth Forest. A series of unusually powerful storms, including "bomb cyclones," struck the Puget Sound region with near hurricane-force winds, causing windsnap and windthrow at high rates even though the deciduous trees are defoliated during this time of the year.

Trees that suffer windthrow will pull up their root system when they fall over whole. Windsnap, on the other hand, occurs when trees break off partway up their trunk. While trees, and particularly Western Red Cedars in the Pacific Northwest, will continue growing upwards into new tops from several branches after falling completely on their side from windthrow, windsnap is often fatal, with the exception of Western Hemlocks.

In the Southworth Forest, the native deciduous trees at maturity are suffering the most. At about 60 to 70 years of age, the area's big leaf maples have reached their maximum height. Although they can live for a few hundred years, the ones growing in clumps will often experience rot down their centers and eventually break in the wind partway up their trunks. The red alders often interspersed with them experience windsnap at about the same age.

Several mature big leaf maples and red alders have been snapped in late 2024, but the damage extends to the conifers as well. The wind coming from the southeast into the forest from the neighboring deforestation at 11090 SE Southworth Dr. has been so fierce that Doug fir trees near the cleared area have been lost to windsnap and grand fir branches on younger trees have been whipped so hard westward by the winds that they have broken mid-branch.

The developers of the deforested land, Meghan and Clint Edwards, continue to fail to admit to their role in exacerbating the wind impacts in the Southworth Forest by clearing their acreage in a 2019 violation of law. Those restoring the neighboring forestlands are collecting new evidence of recent wind impacts for an appeal to the Kitsap County Hearing Examiner tasked in 2025 with judging the environmental damage caused by the deforestation.

Removal of forests inherently causes adverse conditions for adjacent canopies, and the strong winds from the southeast hitting the Southworth Forest without any neighboring protection are worsening the decline of the mature trees. By increasing the ratio of young conifer plantings around the exterior edges of the surviving forest, a new barrier can assist in protecting the next generation of more vulnerable trees.

Significant wind impacts from the neighboring Edwards deforestation to the left are intense on the southeastern side of the Southworth Forest restoration project, severely bending a seven-foot steel post holding a vinyl sign at its base in December 2024. Almost all damage in the area indicates the cleared area as the source of the increased winds.

A cluster of trees suffered windsnap to the west of Edwards' deforestation. Note that all trees are falling away from Edwards' parcel (seen in the background), confirming that the conversion of that property has contributed to windsnap events at a frequency not seen before in that boundary area.

Additional trees on a different property from the prior photo also suffered windsnap near Edwards' conversion. Again, note that the trees are falling away from Edwards' parcel, which is seen in the background to the left. The forest in this area has become very unhealthy since the neighboring deforestation.