We have our trees "thinned" out every couple of years (huge silver maples) and we only lost one branch. However, I agree with the others, luck and tree "thinning" played a part. Since the trees were thinned out - the wind was able to go through the tops, but who knows really.

I am glad we took out and old, sick white oak a couple of months ago. It was a hard cost to swallow at 3K, but it wasn't around to fall on our house!!

We had our big maple trimmed last November, but a big branch broke off on Friday. Thankfully, it didn't hit anything.

My house now has a big hole in the roof and some broken windows because a neighbor's tree fell on it. She felt horrible about it, but what can you do? It was a lovely old tree, and seemed perfectly healthy. It took down my evergreen tree when it went down. I'm sad about that too. (though sadder about the damage to my house.)

the rains a couple days ago took down another tree near us, another perfectly healthy oak. I think the only thing you can do in big storms is to avoid sleeping near the windows.

I agree with the PPs that it's a combination of luck and tree trimming - and what kind of trees you have. Silver Maples and Bradford Pears are notorious for breaking in the wind. In addition to trimming our trees, we also replaced/removed the silver maples. We feel lucky that we had nothing come down but some of our neighbors had some very healthy oak and sweet gum branchs wrenched off the tree and land on fences. Our 'snag' was just fine but it's basically just a 20 foot stump so I didn't expect it to come down and even if it did, it wouldn't hit anything. http://wdfw.wa.gov/living/snags/

We lots of big old trees around our house and are careful about trimming etc. Still ended up losing an 80ft hickory - but no damage. Unlucky it fell, VERY lucky that it didn't damage anything or anyone. With such a freak storm, all bets are off with regards to tree care. So don't get too comfy there.

We have a creaky old tree in our backyard that is home to woodpeckers. It did not fall down because we are lucky.

Both.

If a kid grows up to be a success, is it by nature or nurture?

one more thing, OP. My neighbor had these three towering, unhealthy pine trees and for years we were on her about them. She finally had them removed. We are so thankful. Our house would have been smashed had she not - there's just no way those half dead, tall ass trees would have made it through the storm!

The winds were so strong and direct and constant that even very healthy trees were being literally uprooted and taking huge chunks of sidewalk with them. So luck absolutely has something to do with it. You are lucky that your healthy tree did not lose any limbs or suffer more damage. However, yes, obviously, damaged branches will come down even more easily. However, in a storm like this, ANYTHING that the wind gets a piece of will come down. We had JUST had a huge tree in our front yard trimmed, at considerable cost, and that thing dropped sticks, twigs, and HUGE branches all over our yard. Meantime, the dead tree across the street - the city tree marked with a big "x" for removal that hasn't yet happened, didn't even seem to take a hit. it's literally depending upon which way the wind was blowing as to whether or not you had damage.

I am wondering if we just got lucky (and I use the term loosely, since we were without power from Friday till yesterday) that we didn't have major tree damage this time around, or if it's because we did a lot of trimming this year. If you had a lot of tree damage/mess, can you comment? How much tree work had you done over the years?

I'm curious because I know my neighbors who never do any tree maintenance had tons of damage; on the other hand I know this was a very random storm and I also know that our trees have survived some storms with minimal problems and have sustained huge damage in other storms. This time around we had a decent amount of mess, but nothing that didn't fit into a recycling bag. Each time we trim our four really big trees costs somewhere in the $2k range, and we've been told to do this every 3-5 years, but it's always a painful expense for us... Thanks for any input.