Woke up this morning to find a neighbor's oak tree had fallen across our lane blocking in 8 family's egress to the main road. BTW, it was only about 80 degrees out, but it must have been well over 80% humidity. Well, my newish Husqvarna 543XP took care of this mess lickety-split. It blew through 8-9" oak effortlessly. In the end, I wound up with one full bucket of firewood. The neighbor is pretty crotchety and protective of his trees, so I just cut out the stuff in the right-of-way and no more.
A lot more muscle, overtaxing my little riding mower or begging/borrowing from neighbors. None of those options were anywhere near ideal. It's great to ride in on the tractor with chainsaw to save the day. I felt like a cowboy in a western movie.
Ugh! We had a Memorial Day storm 6 years ago. I had half of a huge white oak and a lead from a cherry go over in the backyard. It was 85 and humid-must have sweat 5 gallons cutting those up. Had to load them all in my loader bucket because it was too wet to get the pick up to them. My buddy got 6 loads in his Nissan Fromtier when he hauled it away.
Very nice Mike and you helped out a few neighbors too. And this is why we keep extra gas on hand (even if we're not cutting at the time) along with the tools to do a job if needed.
Speaking of white oaks... Here's one that fell over our lane a couple years ago. Temperature was much nicer for tree working. As you can see, the crown was enormous. In fact, it's what finally pushed me to put in a stove and start the firewoodin' game. However, at the time, I had a friend who came to help clean it up. I kept the two nice logs from the bole and milled them into lumber and he took the crown for firewood. It must have been several cord.