Slowing and sinking rain causing more tree blowdowns?

No doubt that the wettest areas of our property experience the highest incidence of blowdowns.  I'm worried that more slowing and sinking rain will result in more of my mature trees blowing down.  Any thoughts?

This is pretty common.  Wet soil, probably more than wind, brings down trees. There is not much I can suggest other than to improve drainage. Of course, be aware of the trade offs that may result from that improved drainage.

Ya I agree with John. Unless you are attempting to create/restore wetlands then the absolute maximization of soil moisture shouldn't be your goal. If you have plenty of soil moisture then you don't need to try to capture more, if you have too much then you should be looking at earthworks/soil improvements that will improve drainage

We've experienced a lot of this, mostly with pines. Then they knock down other trees, or worse, get caught up in other trees so they are precarious to safely remove. The plus side to this is that as the pines are removed, the hardwood saplings being to really grow. I wish I had an answer about how to stop it, but I don't.

This is a natural process and is how deep minerals are procured in mature forests. We have some “older” growth forest on our lot and it’s quite dangerous out there when it’s wet and windy. Not really a happy situation near a structure but natural and necessary IMO. I would say in most climates (and I’m in a reasonably wet temperate one) water is still the limiting factor for total annual biomass production and deep soil water retention and dappled trees seem to produce insane growth.

Greg Judy (who is an absolute giant in my thinking) is flattening his swales this week. It doesn’t fit his management and he hasn’t seen the gains he thought would. Every intervention has an upside and downside.

Greg takes out swales

I think this is why I've read that in some climates, going "up" as in hugels is better than going "down" as in swales. They both hold water, but in different ways.

That said, is it possible that the water is being held too close to the surface? In part of our field, in winter the water table is *really* high. Areas where we've improved the soil are still holding a lot more water before that table meets up with it. I know we've got a lot of clay in our soil and often despite a month of rain, if you go to dig a hole it is totally dry 10 inches down. So there are a lot of factors that might go into what is actually happening even a foot down and I suspect the only way to find out will be to dig as straight-sided a hole as you can and look at the layers in the earth.