Despite the high winds and long-lasting storms, our campus fared the latest weather event well until about 7 pm last night (December 11, 2014) when a large stone pine came down on Surge II located west of the Silo.

“We’ve been running our street sweepers round-the-clock from Monday through Thursday making sure our storm drains remained clear, and working our tree crew non-stop to lighten branch loads so our trees could better withstand the deluge of water we knew we’d get,” says Cary Avery, associate director of grounds and landscape services. “This tree’s root system failed.”

“What happens in consistent rain systems like what we’ve been experiencing is that the ground gets so wet it can’t hold the roots any longer. The trees don’t break so much as pull out of the ground,” explains Avery. “That’s what happened to the stone pine here.”

Luckily this storm did take care of most of the lingering leaves, which will help as our campus expects to receive more much needed rain next week.

Thanks go out to all of our grounds and landscape services teams as well as our utilities and building maintenance teams for all the behind-the-scenes work they do to make sure our campus is ready for whatever Mother Nature sends our way.

Links to other media coverage of the storm:

UC Davis Dateline
CBS Sacramento
KCRA Channel 3

PHOTO GALLERY of images from December 2014 storms