Today my job was to turn a bunch of hazard trees in this new suburban developement into habitat snags. (cut the top out so it can't hit anything of value and girdle the base of the tree so it dies meanwhile birds live in it) There was this one tree that I'd had a bad feeling about. It was well over 100' tall and stone cold dead with conks growing out of it. The wind was blowing when we got there, so I looked at it for a bit and then decided to think about my plan while I worked on a tree 20' from it.
While setting up to cut this other tree I heard this large crack sound. I turned around and watched as 80' of the top of the tree broke and fell away from where my helper and I were standing. Fortunately the tree fell away from the house too.
I was eventually going to have to climb higher in the tree then the break point, so I feel pretty lucky.
Plus I still got to charge the customer for turning his tree into a snag.