How long can I leave the storm broke the top out of my tree before it becomes dangerous?
Same day — and same day is not the same as 2am. Get everyone out from under it, rope off the drip line, and book a daylight emergency visit. Overnight rates are worth paying only in specific cases: material hanging over a bedroom or an occupied room, a limb blocking the only exit from the house, anything touching or near a power line (call the utility, not a tree service — no crew should work near an energized drop), or a split trunk leaning over a structure someone is sleeping in. Everything else waits for morning at a lower price. What changes overnight is real, though: hung limbs settle, cracks propagate, and wind comes back.
Whether it can still be saved
It depends almost entirely on where the break is. A single leader broken out of a young or midsize tree with the rest of the crown intact can be reduced back to sound wood and retrained over several seasons — trees do this in the wild constantly. A break that took more than roughly half the crown, or that cracked down into the main trunk, or that left no live growing point below it, is generally a removal, as is any of that on a fast-decaying species. Do not have the stub cut flat across; the cut should go back to a lateral branch large enough to take over as a leader. And do not let anyone top the remaining limbs to 'balance' it.
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