How can strong winds affect trees and power outages?

A few isolated strong to severe storms may develop Friday evening, with damaging winds the primary threat.

How can strong winds affect trees and power outages?

>> Showers, isolated storms expected; Damaging wind gusts, localized flooding possible

A healthy tree can usually withstand strong winds up to a certain degree, but when you add prolonged heavy rain — which can saturate the soil — it becomes a different story.

The water saturating the soil of trees weakens the root system. If it isn’t windy, the threat for tree damage stays low, but if winds pick up this could bring down trees.

Strong wind gusts over 40 mph along with a weakened root system could cause trees to fall over.

If a tree is weak or sick in your yard to start with, that could make it easier to be damage.

Trees can be close to power lines, so a secondary affect could be tree branches damaging lines and causing isolated power outages.