Conifers' wind-wrought woes renew calls for diverse urban forest in Spokane

One after another, clusters of towering coniferous trees in Comstock Park were unceremoniously swept to the ground, piling up like matchsticks in disarray.

One irony blown in by the brutal windstorm on Jan. 13 was that its arboreal damage was most acutely borne by the trees native to Spokane, those that are meant to thrive here and withstand the Inland Northwest climate.

But the recent gusts topped out at a near-record 71 miles per hour and followed a period of heavy rain and above-freezing January temperatures.

The “perfect storm” hit months after a record October snowfall that wreaked havoc on the city’s deciduous trees, which were still bearing foliage.

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