Roaring Wind Dancing Trees

5 o'clock this afternoon with strong gusting 30-40 mph SSW winds I went to the NW entrance of the Woods to see what the past 24 hours had brought. Before dawn there had been some good thunderstorm rain with just over an inch of rain, followed by gusting winds that increased in the afternoon. I walked past the NW pond - well filled at 2.62 ft depth and then on to East pond, even more well-filled at 2.82 ft depth. The East Pond was up over the trail junction and I needed to step out well away to avoid soggy shoes. There were small branches down all around, and two small cedars blocking the trail where I will need a saw, just east of Tall Stump.
I stopped west of Fence Corner to watch the trees tossing in the strong wind. The bouncing crowns were moving chaotically back and forth, all out of synch. It struck me as I watched that the different crown shapes, compass orientation and height created this chaotic bouncing around and provided an extra measure of protection to the forest. If a stand of trees were all planted at the same time, all the same species, they would likely move together and would be subject to more torque and greater likelihood of blow down or breakage. The tossing chaos of the different height stems and different shaped crowns provided more turbulence and broke up the force of the wind.
Good that none of the trees had leaves out yet. That would have increased the force on the branches.
After a fairly long late cold spell, the Woods are now ready to pop their buds. Along the trail, the Liriope monkey grass was showing fresh green. The Multiflora rose was beginning to show 10% new fresh leaves. The Elaeagnus autumn olive had leaves 20-30 % open in the under story and of course the Ligustrum privet had its green leaves from over the winter.
Such enormous strength in the roots and trunk to hold up the largest trees, pecan, walnut, bur oak, cottonwood, even tilted over at an angle, in this roaring wind.