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High winds topple 90-foot poplar trees in Logan

Posted at 5:12 PM, May 23, 2019
and last updated 2019-05-23 19:55:30-04

LOGAN, Utah — Wind gusts reached 65 miles per hour in northern Utah Thursday, causing property damage.

Two 90-foot-tall poplar trees toppled over outside Rocky Mountain Care because of high winds and wet ground.

The rainy spring softened the soil, which was unable to hold the 30-year-old roots in the ground. The trees sprawled out over the parking lot and front lawn.

“It’s quite a mess,” Rocky Mountain Care executive director Forrest Fackrell said.

The trees were so massive, they brought up concrete curbing when they fell.

“This is a very big surprise,” Fackrell said.

It will take this crew a couple of days to completely remove the limbs. A part of the biggest tree will be back, though.

“I thought, ‘Wow!’ Are they just going to throw that away?” said Aaron Kunz.

Where some see destruction, Kunz saw an opportunity.

“I have a mill where I can slice it this way,” Kunz said.

Kunz thinks he can make five coffee tables from the trunk.

“I like to leave the live edge on them so I’ll peel the bark off them. They won’t have a square machine corner on them, that’ll have a side of the tree.”

Kunz is allowed to take the tree on one condition — that he gives a coffee table back to the business where the tree stood for 30 years.

“You don’t expect trees this size could actually come down in a strong wind,” Fackrell said.