Emergency Tree Service in Ellicott City, MD

Ellicott City is built on hills and stream valleys, and its trees grow on the slopes.

Ellicott City sits where the Piedmont drops into the Patapsco River valley. The historic district climbs steep granite hillsides above Main Street, and the neighborhoods that spread west from it, including Valley Mede, Dunloggin, St. Johns Lane, Chatham, and Centennial, were built through the 1960s, '70s, and '80s on rolling ground cut by small stream valleys. Much of that land kept its woods, so tall tulip poplars and oaks stand on slopes above houses, decks, and cul-de-sacs.

Wind is what brings most of those trees down. The derecho of June 29, 2012 and Hurricane Isabel in September 2003 both left large numbers of Howard County homes without power, mostly from trees and limbs on lines. Sandy in 2012 added heavy rain and wind on top of each other, which is the combination that uproots trees on sloped, saturated ground.

Ellicott City is also known for the flash floods of July 30, 2016 and May 27, 2018, when torrential rain sent water down the Tiber and Hudson branches and through Main Street. Those were flood disasters, not windstorms, but they show how fast water moves through these valleys and how much it can undercut stream banks. The National Weather Service office in Sterling, Virginia (LWX) issues the warnings for Howard County.