The summer I was 13, Hurricane Belle struck Long Island. It was Aug. 10, and the authorities ordered people in exposed and low-lying areas to clear out. I don’t know where the city folk went, but we evacuated from our place on Cranberry Hole Road to a friend’s house in town. Some of us youngsters took it further by hiding in a bedroom closet, though it was actually more that we wanted to do our kid things out of the sight of the adults. Making out may or may not have been involved.
Belle came ashore at Freeport near midnight with sustained winds of about 70 miles per hour, which would be called a Category 1 today. At 2 a.m. an elm at the corner of Main Street cleaved in two, narrowly missing the house where we slept. Serious damage was relatively scarce. A tree fell on a main power line outside Cullum’s Hardware in Amagansett, cutting off electricity over a wide area.
It wasn’t until nine years later, 1985, that another hurricane hit Long Island, with wind reaching 85 m.p.h. Gloria arrived on Sept. 27, which presented less of an evacuation issue than when Belle approached at the height of the season. Hurricane Bob, in 1991, was the real deal, with 115-m.p.h. wind, but it veered east of Long Island.
Each intense storm provides a tree-pruning service. Weakened limbs shear off, and rotten branches are shaken out of the canopy.
Driving around recently, I’ve noticed an increasing amount of deadwood alongside the roads. In July, a large section of elm fell across Main Street, injuring a driver and damaging several other cars. Would this limb have been already culled had we had a hurricane? Possibly. I think the trees are telling us that a serious storm is long overdue.