It‘s the clashing of hot and cold air that cause all the problems; that‘s why it‘s the spring and summer we should look out for, with only the occasional winter storm.‘ Speaking of which, there have only been a few in the last 20 years I’ve been in business, with only one being worth mentioning—the ice storm of 1994—what a nightmare!  It‘s the spring and summer months that 95% of our calls related to damaged trees and property come in— and four out of five trees that we go clean up and remove off a house, car, drive and/or yard were really not the storms fault anyway,they were problems waiting to happen.  That‘s right.  I go out and look at that beautiful tree split in half and think how sad it is that I didn’t get to see it before it fell apart. Given the opportunity, I could have informed the owner that with some cable bracing and/or proper pruning this tree would have been fine and the homeowner would still have a shade tree and the money; now they have neither.  A large portion of these lost trees are simple problems like a multi-stem trunk with sharply angled forks and most are reasonably easy to protect.In other cases, I see uprooted trees with mushrooms around the base and others with conks and/or cavities up the main frame and say to myself, ―how did it make it this long?  What I‘m encouraging is that you take a few minutes and walk through the yard and look at your trees; they don‘t have to have leaves to determine these most common problems. As a matter of fact, a fully foliated tree has no reflection on how safe it is.Look for the following: Sharp angled forks in the low and mid-area trunk section. This is our number one problem.  Mushrooms on the ground within 6 ft. of the base or on the trunk and stems. Old injuries anywhere on the tree – and of course if it hasn’t had any leaves on it in the last few growing seasons – this could be a problem too.  The structure is what counts.  Buttress rot, crotch-rot, and sharp angled forks are always bad news.  There are many other factors that play a role in inspections although these are the biggies.  Still yet, remember: anything that stands has the ability to fall.  There‘s no way to truly state that a tree will not fail under some unforeseen condition, although with an understanding of why they fail, it allows us to prevent many tree casualties. No need to wait until you get spring fever.  Do the ounce of prevention now during winter– it‘s better for you, the trees, and us.■