Heavy Wet Snow and Evergreens: Preventing the Split

Calgary specializes in the kind of snow that does the most damage: heavy, wet, and often arriving in September or May when trees are still in leaf. An evergreen holds that snow across its whole surface area, and the load adds up to hundreds of kilograms on a mature spruce.

The result is splayed branches, split multi-stemmed cedars and junipers, and broken laterals on columnar trees. Most of it is preventable, and some of the common responses make it worse.

Why Evergreens Take the Worst of It

Deciduous trees in winter present bare branches that shed snow readily. An evergreen offers a dense surface of needles or scale foliage that catches and holds it, and the snow keeps accumulating instead of falling through.

Multi-stemmed forms are especially vulnerable. Upright junipers and cedars with several leaders grow with tight, weak unions at the base, and wet snow pushes those stems apart until they split at the crotch.

Clearing Snow Without Causing Damage

Use a broom or your hands and work from the bottom of the tree upward. Clearing the lower branches first means the snow you knock off higher up does not reload the branches below.

Push branches gently upward to shed the load rather than beating them downward, which is how branches break. Never shake a frozen evergreen hard; wood that is cold and brittle snaps instead of flexing. If the snow has frozen into ice on the foliage, leave it and let it melt.

What to Do With a Splayed Evergreen

A cedar or juniper that has been pushed open by snow can often be brought back. Clear the snow, then tie the stems back into position with a wide, soft material such as strapping or fabric, never wire or thin cord that cuts into the bark.

Leave the ties on through the winter and remove them in spring once the plant has held its shape. If the same tree splays every year, wrapping it before winter or installing a permanent flexible tie is the sensible long-term answer.

Preventive Steps Before Winter

Wrapping vulnerable multi-stemmed evergreens in burlap or spiral-tying them in late fall stops the splaying before it starts, and it takes far less time than repairing it afterward.

Structural pruning matters too. A tree with a single dominant leader and well-spaced branches handles snow much better than one with several competing stems. That work is best done while the tree is young, and it pays off every winter for the rest of its life.

Snow From Roofs and Shovels

A lot of evergreen damage in Calgary does not fall from the sky. It slides off a roof onto the tree below, or gets thrown onto it from a driveway. Both deliver a concentrated load that no branch structure is designed for.

Look at where your roof sheds and where the snow from your shovel or blower lands, then adjust. Roof snow guards or simply not siting a vulnerable tree under a sliding roofline prevents a repeating problem.

After Something Breaks

Clean up torn branches with a proper cut back to the branch collar rather than leaving a stub, and resist the urge to seal the wound. On evergreens, remember that the bare wood left behind will not refoliate, so shape expectations accordingly.

If a large limb has failed or a stem has split, it is worth an assessment before the next storm, since a partly split union will fail completely under the next load. Aardvark Tree Care handles storm damage across Calgary and can tell you what can be saved and what needs to come out.

Brush snow upward from the bottom branches first, and never shake a frozen evergreen.