Cleaning Up After a Lehigh Valley Ice Storm: A Debris Guide

Ice Storms Are a Real Part of a Lehigh Valley Winter

Winter ice storms are a regular feature of the season across the Lehigh Valley, and they leave behind a distinctive kind of mess: heavy, ice-coated limbs down across yards and driveways, damaged gutters and roof sections, and downed branches tangled with fencing or outdoor structures. Whether the storm caught your property near the I-78 corridor in Upper Macungie, out toward Fogelsville and Route 100, or anywhere else across the sixteen towns in Lehigh and Northampton Counties, the cleanup process looks pretty similar, and doing it in the right order saves both time and hassle later.

Safety Comes Before Cleanup

Before anything gets hauled, take stock of what's actually safe to touch. Ice-laden branches carry a lot of extra weight and can shift or drop without warning as the ice melts, so give any limb that's still resting against your house, a power line, or another branch a wide berth. Never approach downed limbs anywhere near a power line — treat any line on the ground or any tree contact with a line as live and call the utility company, not a hauler. Roof damage is its own hazard category: don't get on a roof to assess ice or wind damage yourself, especially with ice still present; that's a job for a professional who can do it safely, and it often needs to happen before any debris cleanup begins anyway.

Once it's safe to move around the property, cutting and clearing smaller limbs and loose debris yourself is usually straightforward. Larger limbs still connected to trees, or anything tangled in power lines, is best left to a tree service with the right equipment.

Sizing a Container for Storm Cleanup

Storm debris is bulky but often lighter than construction material, which changes how you think about container size. A single downed tree or a moderate amount of limb debris from one property often fits comfortably in a 15-yard container — about four to five pickup truck loads. If the storm took down multiple trees, damaged a roof section that needs to be torn off and replaced, or you're clearing debris across a larger property, a 20-yard container (roughly six pickup truck loads) gives more room to work without needing a second pickup. For a widespread cleanup involving significant tree loss plus roofing or structural debris, a 30-yard container handles the volume in one placement.

One thing to flag when you call: mixed storm debris (branches, roofing material, damaged siding) can add up in weight faster than pure yard waste, so mention what's actually going in the box so the container and weight allowance are matched to the job.

Sorting Debris With Insurance in Mind

If your property has roof, siding, gutter, or structural damage from the storm, there's a good chance you'll be filing an insurance claim — and how you handle debris before it goes in the dumpster can make that process considerably smoother. A few habits worth adopting before anything gets hauled away:

• Photograph and video the damage thoroughly before you touch or move anything — wide shots of the property and close-ups of specific damage (roof, gutters, siding, fencing).
• Keep storm-damaged building materials (shingles, siding, damaged fencing) separated from plain yard debris like branches and brush where practical, since an adjuster may want to see or reference specific damaged material.
• Hold off on discarding anything an adjuster may need to inspect in person until your claim is filed and, ideally, an inspection has been scheduled or completed.
• Keep a simple written log of what was removed and roughly when, in case your insurer asks for a summary later.

Once documentation is handled, general yard debris — branches, twigs, ice-damaged brush — can go straight into the container without any special sorting.

Getting a Container There Quickly

After a widespread ice storm, demand for containers across the Lehigh Valley climbs fast, so it helps to call as early as possible once your property is safe to access. ALW Dumpster Rental Allentown covers the full sixteen-town service area — from Whitehall and Catasauqua down through Emmaus and Macungie, and out to Bethlehem, Easton, and Nazareth — so wherever the storm hit, getting a right-sized container on-site quickly is usually just a phone call away.