I normally let ice and snow damage to my fruit orchard act as part of my pruning cycle. But this year's storm tore off, or badly damaged ninety percent of some of my peach and nectarine trees, so I will try to temporarily prop and repair some broken branches to salvage at least some of the fruit crop.
Remember to leave the branch collar when you cut back broken limbs, and never paint or tar over the wounds. Hopefully new growth will provide bearing wood on the trees for next year.
A past pruning decision - by you, or your neighbors - may have been responsible for a tree falling in the ice storm, and proper pruning could help preserve the urban forest during the next storm.
If you take all the branches hanging over your house off a tree, or your neighbor takes off branches hanging into their yard from a fence-line tree on your side, the result is a lopsided tree waiting to tip over with the next ice or snow load. You are, of course, allowed to cut off branches and foliage from a neighbor's tree that extends into your yard, and some insurance companies require that no branches extend over the roof of your home. Talking to your neighbor or insurance company (good luck there- I had to switch carriers) - might allow the tree to stay more intact and in balance.
And if you have 40 years of forethought, don't plant it so close to the house or property line. Of the two lopsided, pruned 60-foot apples that have fallen in my yard, I removed one - so I could get out the back door - and the other is now a horizontal apple grove that is much easier to harvest. A third apple that tipped this year - only 20 feet tall - I have pulled back up and braced.
Pruning the other side of a lopsided tree can help, but permanent props and cables, like those on the old cherry tree in Eugene's Rose Garden can allow a vulnerable tree to thrive, produce fruit, and valuable shade during our increasingly hot summers.
