How many have actually heard a 100 foot tall tree fall and hit the ground?

[matcom]

close up?

just had our dead oak cut down. between 85 and 100 feet tall.

never been THAT close before. what an awesome sound.

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. I've heard 1100 foot buildings fall down.

And some tall trees, but only in the 50 foot range. Never heard a huge one like you did!

I bet it was hella BOOOM!

Even small trees make a nice boom.

[XemaSab]

2. Yup

the redwood across the street in Arcata.

QUITE a noise.

[Midlodemocrat]

3. We had one taken down a few years ago.

I was shocked by the reverberations when it hit the ground. Felt like an earthquake.

[Kraklen]

4. Not the sound, didn't see it....

But I was hiking through some old growth forest during a major storm a couple of years ago (I'm a northwesterner, you get soaked when you go hiking storm or not).

On the way back we came across a huge old tree that had crashed across the trail we had walked just minutes before.

The smell was incredible. Fresh sap and the smell of douglas fir needles permeated the air even with the rain pouring and the wind howling.

What an awesome smell.

:smoke:

[MadHound]

5. When I was a kid

My family's home had lots of old, tall trees on the lot, many over 100' tall.

One of the ones in front had to come down, so all of the men folk in the extended family(grandpa, uncles, brother in law etc.) got together with their chainsaws. After a few beers worth of planning, they go out with ropes and tackle, tie the tree and haul it in such a way as to (hopefully) fall in the right direction when cut.

Dad and crew fire up the saws, various people are hauling on the ropes, Dad makes the final cut through, those on the ropes start pulling real hard. . . .

And the tree promptly slews away a good ninetly degrees and falls down, taking out the corner of our front porch in the process.

And yes, it was a cool sight and sound!

[ewagner]

6. Heard this one

about 1/2 block away when it happened....

[Spock_is_Skeptical]

7. Yes, quite a few times actually

Grew up in the country - my dad cut down a few dead/diseased trees over the years on the property.

I remember that sound well, it is awesome. Pretty sad to watch, I always thought.

I also remember the neverending, hot and sweaty task of assisting with cutting up the remains for firewood, loading it onto the truck & taking it to the pond. We always had a good supply for campfires.

[xmas74]

8. When I was young my dad once did lumberjack work.

I heard it a couple of times and it frightened me then.
Now it would probably be really cool.

[sui generis]

9. my neighbor's 100 ft. live oak split in half during a storm

and fell into my back yard - tore out all the wires to the house and pool house. I have pics somewhere - it fell between the back porch and the pool house and all the way out to the pool and crushed the fence and part of the back deck. It was like instant 30 ft high monkey bars/jungle - my old critter dogs thought it was pretty cool too. Ms. Brandy (my green & blue eyed 16 year old great dane) got to pretend she was descended from monkeys, a theory she had been working on for some time. There is nothing quite like watching your dogs walking up and down the tree branches of a felled tree for entertainment.

Took the insurance contractors two weeks to get out and cut it up for firewood, but the other half of the tree is still standing and flourishing four years later. And I still have a bottomless supply of firewood.

[kodi]

10. i have, and had to chop it up when it did. happened during a wind storm

it was nearly the tallest tree on the property. a gum tree and it sounded like loud cannonfire when it snapped at the bottom of the trunk and went down. scared the dogs nearly to death. had it fallen 180 degrees in the other direction it would have crushed the house.

i have about 150 80-plus foot trees on my property and each year 1-2 go down in wind storms, mostly tall, old pine trees, but that gum tree was huge and healthy when it snapped.

[Hugin]

11. It depends... Was I in the forest?

Yeah, a few years ago (ages in computer hardware update
time) workers were cutting a huge tree down outside the
building I was working in...

The shock caused the disk heads to bounce off of the
disks in all of the drives. Ruining them all instantly.

After that I padded underneath all of the machines.

[catmandu57]

12. Many times

About twenty or more years ago a friend and I kept ourselves alive by selling firewood, he did the cutting and I loaded the wood. We felled many a 100 foot tree.

[Lilyhoney]

13. Five years ago when we moved into this house,

The back yard was very dry as no one had lived here for several months and the people who were here before that did'nt take care of the place. So I started watering everything in the yard. I was amazed at all the stuff that started growing with only a little water. Calalilies, artichokes, tomatoes, banana plants.

One day as I was walking to the front door of the house, I heard an incredible noise comming from the rear of the house. By the time I took the several steps to make it to the kitchen window, I saw the tree hitting and bouncing off the ground with a great cloud of dust from the dry earth.

It was maybe 2 & 1/2 stories tall, a dead Eucalyptus tree. I guess from all the watering I did must have made it shift or something. It sounded awesome. I know if I were to hear another tree falling, it would register in my brain faster than it did before I heard this one. Luckily the tree fell from the rear to the center of the yard and nothing was damaged and no one was hurt.

My husband was so excited he did'nt even change out of his suit before he took the chain saw to it. We had wood to bun all year.

[Javaman]

14. My parents have a cabin in Canada...

When I was 15, we had to take down this old oak, really sad. It was leaning way over the house and was threatening to snap in half during a big storm. Needless to say, if it did it would have taken the house out and us along with it.

So my dad, got help from a few of the neighbors and several of the locals to take it down. Payment was a portion of the wood left over. Ah the good old days.

Anyway, it was in such odd spot and was leaning over the house, so trying to top it was out of the question. We had to take it down in one shot.

So we hooked up several pulley's on the opposite side and started cutting down at the base on the tree's "backside".

Little by little with and occasional tug on the pulley and a several deeper cuts. The tree began to sway the other way, till it was upright completely.

I'll never forget when quite suddenly the rope through the pulley when slack. It's as if everything in the world went quiet. I will never forget the sight of the tree falling. As if a great giant had lost it's balance. The final snap of it's great trunk at the base sent wood shrapnel flying for hundreds of feet. The sound was deafening, since I was on that that side of it. Like a wood cannon.

As impressive, magnificent as the sight and sound was, it was also extremely sad for me. Not only was this old growth tree ending it's life, but on it's way down to the ground, because of it's length, it took out several smaller trees in it's path.

Equally, impressive was the sound it made when hitting the ground. I felt the vibration through my body over 200 feet away. But what I will always remember is not the sound of the tree hitting per say but the sound of it's branches coming to rest. It sounded as if the tree let out one last great sigh.

[SOteric]

15. I spend my weekends in the rain forests and logging communities

of the Olympic Penninsula. I've heard it more than a few times. Impressive sound.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

16. I've heard a 75' (give or take a few feet) tree fall down

That's as close as I get. Two years ago at around 6 AM my neighbors magnolia took an unexpected dive. I was outside watering and couldn't figure out what had happened until I heard her cursing.

[DS1]

17. I've had one fall behind me and miss by about 30 feet

It was after H Gloria in New Jersey, a couple seconds sooner and I would've been driven into the ground like a nail

[AngryAmish]

18. Several

However I was in a tornado and never heard them fall. I was too paniced trying to run inside.