City officials will shut down about eight blocks of South 13th Street — between Van Dorn and South streets — from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday to clean up one of the areas of Lincoln hit hardest by the weekend’s one-two weather punch.

City Forester Steve Schwab  said he and his staff are trying to keep their priorities in order as they deal with a long list of tree-related disruptions left behind by Saturday morning and Sunday evening windstorms.

“South 13th Street was hit so bad from about South to Calvert that we have to close that entire street down in order to get done what we need to get done,” Schwab said.

He expected city crews to be working overtime hours again Tuesday night.

“We just ask for people’s patience, and they’ve been very understanding when they’ve called and reported damage. They understand that getting the streets cleared and getting the trees off houses is still the most important thing we’re doing right now.”

A combination of strong easterly winds early Saturday morning and an even stronger southerly blast before sunset Sunday knocked down or uprooted many trees and caused major limb damage to others.

While it’s time to get busy, Schwab said, he and other tree lovers may first have to give themselves a pep talk about the ravaging of a wide range of damaged species  — ash, hackberry, linden, maple, honey locust and more.

“It’s hard to see, especially the mature trees that we have to take out,” he said, “because they can’t be replaced in kind just like that. When you see large trees that you have to take out, that’s anywhere from 40 to 60 years of tree growth that’s lost.”

The end result doesn’t rate with an October 1997 weather calamity in which more than a dozen inches of heavy wet snow broke down trees that had yet to shed their leaves. By Lincoln standards, the combined weekend tree impact may be comparable to a summer storm that swept across the state from west to east in 1993, generating winds near 100 mph.

Peak winds Sunday were closer to 70 mph, but saturated soil may have made evergreen trees, in particular, more vulnerable to uprooting. And the generous spring rainfall that produced a profusion of leafy foliage on other trees may have created more wind resistance and contributed to their demise.

“Even with perfectly healthy trees, it just snapped them off or totally blew them over,” Schwab said.

Reach Art Hovey at 473-7322 or at ahovey@journalstar.com.