A tree does not fail because the wind was strong. It fails because the canopy caught the wind like a sail and the roots or the trunk gave first. Thinning the crown lets air move through the tree instead of pushing against it, and it is the single most useful thing you can do to a mature tree before a storm season in South Florida.
Timing matters more than most people expect. Pruning early in the season gives the tree time to seal its cuts and settle before the first serious system arrives. Pruning in the days before a named storm is worse than doing nothing: fresh cuts, a lightened canopy the tree has not adjusted to, and a pile of cut material in the yard that becomes debris the moment the wind picks up.
There is a wrong way to do it, and it is common. Cutting every limb back to a stub — hat-racking — does not make a tree safer. It removes the leaves the tree feeds on, and it forces a flush of weak regrowth attached only to the outer bark. Those new limbs are the ones that snap. Proper thinning removes selected branches back to a growing point and leaves the tree's structure intact.
Palms have their own rules: take the dead fronds and the seed pods, leave the green ones. Stripping a palm back to a few upright fronds weakens it in exactly the conditions it was built for. Call Green Toro Group at (786) 337-5461 to talk about the trees on your property — we answer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
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