Southeast Michigan spent the first week of September cleaning up after two days of severe storms. On properties with mature trees, the debris on the ground is the easy part. The part that matters is the damage still standing thirty or forty feet overhead, where nobody has looked yet.
Wind damage is deceptive that way. A limb that came down has already done everything it is going to do. A limb that cracked and stayed up is an open item, and it stays open until either a professional takes it down or the next round of weather does.
What the National Weather Service Confirmed
The National Weather Service office in Detroit/Pontiac has published an event summary for September 2 and 3, 2026, at weather.gov/dtx/severeweather0902032026. According to that summary:
- Severe weather ran from the afternoon of September 2 through the evening of September 3, affecting counties including Oakland, Macomb, St. Clair, Wayne, Livingston, Washtenaw and Monroe.
- Measured wind gusts included 70 mph at Howell, 67 mph at Livingston County Airport, 60 mph at St. Clair Shores, and 58 mph at Detroit Metro Airport.
- Hail up to two inches in diameter was reported at multiple locations.
- Three tornadoes were confirmed: an EF-2 in Detroit with estimated peak winds of 115 mph along a 3.5-mile path, and EF-0 tornadoes in Marysville and Lincoln Park.
- Nearly 300,000 power outages were reported across the two days, alongside widespread tree damage and downed power lines.
That is the full extent of what the weather service documented, and it is enough to explain why so many properties across Macomb and Oakland counties have limbs down this week. Whether a particular property took the worst of it is a question the property answers, not the map — straight-line wind damage is notoriously uneven from one block to the next.
The Damage You Can See Is Not the Damage That Matters
After a wind event, most property owners walk the grounds, see what fell, and clear it. That is a reasonable instinct and an incomplete inspection. The failures worth finding are the ones that have not finished failing:
- Hangers. Broken limbs that never reached the ground, caught in the canopy. They come down later, on their own schedule, usually in the next storm.
- Cracked branch unions. A split where a large limb joins the trunk, often visible only as a dark seam. The limb looks normal and is no longer attached the way it was.
- A lifted root plate. Soil heaved or cracked on one side of the trunk means the tree moved at the root. A tree that moved once will move again in softer ground.
- A new lean. Compare the tree to a vertical reference — a downspout, a fence post, a light pole. A lean that was not there in August is a structural finding, not an aesthetic one.
- Stripped bark or a wound on the trunk. Where hail or debris removed bark, the tree has an entry point for decay that will not be obvious for a season or two.
None of these require a decision today. All of them require a decision before the ground freezes and the next round of wind arrives.
What Should Be Left Alone
Some storm damage is not a cleanup task at any skill level:
- Anything touching or near a power line. Treat every downed line as energized and call the utility. This is not a landscaping call, and no contractor should be working around a line that has not been cleared by the utility first.
- Hangers overhead. A limb suspended in a canopy is holding stored energy in a way that is difficult to read from the ground and does not release predictably.
- Wood under tension. A trunk bent against a fence, a limb pinned under another limb, a tree leaning into a structure. Cutting into loaded wood is where the serious injuries in storm cleanup happen.
- Chainsaw work above shoulder height or from a ladder. The combination is the one arborists warn about most consistently.
What Is Reasonable to Handle
Small ground debris, clearing walkways and drive lanes so the property is safe to move through, and raking the litter out of beds are all ordinary property work. Photograph the damage before doing any of it — that is the one step that is easy to skip and impossible to redo.
Documenting the Damage
Insurance policies differ, and coverage questions belong with the carrier rather than with a landscape contractor. What is universally useful is documentation captured before cleanup starts:
- Wide shots that establish where on the property the damage sits, then close shots of each failure.
- Photos taken before debris is moved, since a cleared site is very hard to describe after the fact.
- A written scope and invoice for any work performed, kept with the photos.
- Where a claim is likely, holding the debris on site until the adjuster has seen it.
Removal or Pruning?
Not every damaged tree is a removal, and treating them all as one is how properties lose canopy they did not need to lose. Structural pruning handles a surprising amount of storm damage — cleaning up broken ends, removing hangers, and reducing weight on a compromised side so the tree can compartmentalize the wound. That is the work covered under tree trimming and pruning.
Removal becomes the responsible call when the structure itself is gone: a lifted root plate, a split that runs into the trunk, the loss of a large share of the canopy, or decay revealed by the failure that was not visible before. A certified arborist's assessment is what separates these cases, and the difference is worth the visit — what tree removal costs in Metro Detroit varies mostly with size, access and proximity to structures, all of which a walk-through settles quickly.
What a Lost Canopy Tree Changes
Losing a mature tree is a design event as much as a maintenance one. A canopy that has been there for decades has been setting the terms for everything under it: which plantings tolerate the bed they are in, how much afternoon sun the patio takes, where water goes during a heavy rain, and what the property screens from the road.
Remove it and those terms change at once. Shade plantings that thrived for years are suddenly in full sun, and sightlines that were private are not. The right moment to think about this is while the stump work is being scoped, not the following spring — replanting, regrading and bed rework are far cheaper when the equipment is already on site. That is the ground covered by landscape removal and renovations, and the tree species that do well in Southeast Michigan landscapes are worth reviewing before defaulting to whatever was there before.
Getting an Assessment
Great Lakes Landscaping is based in Chesterfield and works across Macomb and Oakland counties, handling tree removal, pruning and the landscape work that follows. If the September storms left damage on your property — visible or suspected — get in touch to arrange an assessment while the evidence is still on the tree.