The branch is no longer attached to anything structural — it is resting on whatever caught it, held by friction and the shape of a fork rather than by wood fiber. That is what makes this one different from everything else on this list: there is no gradual decline, no symptom to monitor, and no reliable relationship between wind and when it comes down. A hanger can sit motionless for a week and release on a still morning simply because the leaves dried out and the balance changed. The trade name for it is a widowmaker, and that is not a figure of speech. In Danville — Danville Main Street Historic District and Danville Courthouse Square Historic District included, that's normally a storm damage cleanup job at $400–$4,000. Call tonight.
Why this comes up in Danville
NWS Indianapolis records 32 Hendricks County tornadoes from 1950 to 2025, and none of them lists Danville as the location — the county's tornado damage has clustered east toward Brownsburg and Avon. The costliest and most recent came on 2 April 2025: an EF2 near Brownsburg Airport with $1.2 million in damage and one injury, plus an EF1 at Brownsburg at $200,000. Before that, four tornadoes touched down in a single afternoon on 15 August 2016 (Clayton, Brownsburg twice, and Avon), and an EF1 hit Six Points on 24 June 2014 with $1.0 million in damage. The town's ordinary risk is straight-line wind, including the 29 June 2012 derecho.
Danville's canopy
The Main Street Historic District developed circa 1844–1920 across just 9 acres and 37 contributing buildings, and the Courthouse Square district circa 1865–1960 over 70 acres — those blocks hold the town's oldest and largest trees on narrow lots with sidewalks on both sides. Danville does actively manage its right-of-way canopy through a standing Tree Advisory Committee, though the specific inventory and replanting-ratio requirements attributed to Chapter 97 could not be verified.
Who to call first in Danville
Duke Energy Indiana serves the town and the area south and east, per the IURC's service-territory GIS; just north of Danville the territory becomes Hendricks Power Cooperative, an REMC. Danville runs municipal water, wastewater and stormwater — roughly 3,500 water customers in Center Township — but not electric. Worth knowing: 170 IAC 4-9's two-week-notice and 25-percent-canopy-consent rules are written for investor-owned utilities and name Duke, AES/IPL, I&M, NIPSCO and CenterPoint — not the REMCs.
Hendricks County (county seat) County rules
No permit is required to remove a tree on private property in Danville. Beyond that, the town's Chapter 97 tree code could not be verified from a retrievable source: what danvillein.gov does confirm is that a three-member Tree Advisory Committee exists to encourage the planting, care and preservation of trees in the public right-of-way. Chapter 97 is reported to require written permission from that committee and the Staff Project Coordinator before removing, or trimming more than one-fifth of, any right-of-way tree, on a free 30-day permit — confirm that requirement with Town Hall before any work in the tree lawn.