Storm Stump and Root Plate Cleanup in Nashville, Tennessee

The 2020 Tornado Stumps Still Standing in East Nashville

The tornado that crossed Davidson County in the early hours of 3 March 2020 rated EF3, touched down at half past midnight and stayed down for a little over an hour. Sixty miles of track, two-thirds of a mile across at its widest, peak winds around 165 mph. It ran Bells Bend, John C. Tune Airport, Bordeaux, Tennessee State University, North Nashville, Germantown, then intensified through East Nashville and hit Five Points hardest before crossing Donelson. It did $1.504 billion in damage, the eighth-costliest tornado in United States history.

What that left in back yards was not clean work. Crews in the days afterward were cutting to open streets and get tarps onto roofs, which means flush cuts at ground level with a saw, no grinding, and rounds stacked wherever there was room. Six years on, those stumps are still there behind houses on Holly Street, Ordway Place and Gartland Avenue, and most of them are on fifty-foot lots where the only route to the back is a side gate between two structures.

They have also gained something in six years: soil and grit worked into the cut face, and grass grown over the flare. That is a slower grind than a fresh one, and we price it that way rather than discovering it on site.

Ice Storm Stump Grinding After Winter Storm Fern

Winter Storm Fern, 25 and 26 January 2026, put more than 230,000 Nashville Electric Service customers in the dark, the largest single outage event in the utility's history. The heaviest tree damage was not downtown. It was in the old-canopy, large-lot western neighborhoods, and the same belt runs east into Green Hills and along the narrow shoulderless lanes off Estes Road.

Between 2 and 8 March 2026 an Urban Forest Strike Team drawn from six states surveyed the damage alongside state forestry staff and Metro Water. Their categories tell you what to look for on your own trees: hangers still aloft, root plates lifted, trunks split to the heartwood, and crowns that lost more than half their structure. A crown that lost half its structure is not a stump yet. It is next year's stump, and the ones on that list are coming out on a schedule rather than in an emergency.

One thing to plan around: NES does not remove storm debris, downed limbs, or anything its own crews cut to restore power, and it does not remove stumps. Whatever is lying in the yard after the lights come back on belongs to the property owner, in writing.

Why a Wind-Thrown Nashville Stump Grinds Differently

A sawn stump is a flat disc with a known centre. What the wind leaves is a plate tipped up on edge with an open hole behind it. Those are not variations on one job.

The plate holds soil, and in the Central Basin that soil holds limestone. It also holds whatever was in the ground where the tree grew: old fence wire on a Bordeaux bluff lot, brick and cinder on a South Nashville infill lot, a length of galvanised pipe nobody remembers burying. Teeth find all of it. Grinding a plate is slower per inch than grinding a trunk and it wears steel faster.

The sequence matters too. The plate goes back down into its own crater first, which usually needs a machine and always needs the void underneath checked, then the wood gets ground, then the hole gets closed. That is why storm stumps are quoted by the hour rather than by diameter. A twenty-inch trunk on a tipped plate can take longer than a thirty-six-inch stump cut level with the ground.

Flood-Killed Roots and Stump Work on Nashville Bottoms

On 1 and 2 May 2010 Nashville took 13.57 inches of rain in two days, more than double the previous record. The Cumberland crested at 51.86 feet, the highest since 1937, and the Harpeth set all-time record crests at both Bellevue and Kingston Springs. I-24 went under along Mill Creek.

That storm is fifteen years gone and it is still producing stumps. Extended inundation kills root systems slowly. Bottomland trees along the Harpeth, Mill Creek and Whites Creek that leafed out fine in 2011 have been declining ever since, and a sycamore or silver maple coming down in Pennington Bend or off River Road Pike in 2026 is frequently a 2010 injury finally finishing the job.

It matters for the grind because a flood-stressed root plate is often already decayed below grade. Those come out easier than they look, but the hole is bigger than the stump suggested and it holds water, which changes what you can put back on the spot.

What to sort out before we quote a storm stump

• Photograph the stump and the crater before anyone moves anything, for the claim
• Confirm whether the tree crew is coming back for the rounds, or whether they are staying
• Check whether the stump is on your side of the line or in the Metro strip
• Tell us if the plate is still standing on edge, because that is a different machine
• Note any young replacement tree within fifteen feet, so we can protect its root zone
• Say whether the ground has dried out, since a soft yard in February is a rescheduled job