A cottonwood limb came through the ceiling at two in the morning. A trunk is across the driveway and nobody is getting out. The elm that stood through forty springs is suddenly leaning over the neighbor's carport with the soil cracked open at its base. Roque Tree Service handles emergency tree removal in Albuquerque, NM whenever it happens — the 24 hour tree service Albuquerque homeowners need when the wind does not wait for business hours. Emergency service is 24/7, and we head out within about an hour, depending on distance. Family owned since 2015, licensed (NM license #L1313927408), bonded and insured, with 100% of jobs done by our own crews.
Urgent work reaches us fastest by phone, overnight and on weekends included: call (505) 306-2007 and tell us what fell, where it landed, whether anything is on the house or a vehicle, and whether a wire is in the picture. If it is safe to take one, send a photo from the ground through the Get Free Estimate form — a single picture tells us what the job needs before we roll. Storm response is one part of the full range of tree care we bring to the metro; if your tree is still standing and sound and you have simply been meaning to deal with it, that is a scheduled tree removal. This page is for right now.
Is This a Tree Emergency? A Sixty-Second Triage
Send the request now if any of these describe your property:
- A tree fell on the house, the garage, a carport, a shed or a car. Weight on a structure gets worse with every gust — a cracked rafter tonight is a collapsed section by tomorrow afternoon, and rain finds the opening fast.
- A tree blocking the driveway or the only way in and out. On long valley lots and single-access foothill drives that is not an inconvenience; it is an ambulance that cannot reach the house.
- A trunk or limb touching a power line or the service drop. That span belongs to the utility first — the next section covers exactly how it works.
- A tree leaning after storm winds, with soil cracked, lifted or mounded on the side away from the lean. That is root-plate movement, and on loose mesa sand or saturated valley ground these trees seldom re-anchor.
- Hangers. A broken limb hung up in the canopy over a roof, a drive, a patio or a play structure has one job left, and gravity picks the timing. The trade names them widow-makers for a reason.
- A split trunk or an opened union — the classic failure on a big Siberian elm, globe willow or mulberry with included bark at the main fork. Half the tree is now a lever over whatever sits under it.
One safety note, plainly: wind-thrown wood is under load. A trunk resting on a roof is spring-loaded, a limb pinned beneath another releases the moment it is cut, and post-storm chainsaw work is where homeowners get seriously hurt. Do not cut, do not climb onto the roof for a better look, and do not drive a vehicle out from under a tree.
What can wait for a scheduled visit: a dead elm that has been dead since spring, a lean you first noticed two summers ago with firm soil and a full crown, a mulberry you have wanted gone for years.
Wire Involved? PNM First, the Saw Second
If any line is down, sagging, or has a tree resting on it, report it to PNM before you contact a tree company. Use PNM's own outage channels, treat every wire as live — including the one lying in wet gravel that looks like cable — and keep people and pets back from the whole span, not just the wire.
Here is how the work divides. PNM trims its distribution lines on a cycle through its contractor and will clear a tree off those primary lines. It does not trim or clear the service drop running to your house; instead it disconnects the drop so a private crew can work safely, then reconnects once the tree is off. PNM crews also do not haul storm debris. So the order after a wind night is: the utility clears or de-energizes the span, we take the tree, we take the debris. Anyone who offers to "just cut it off the line" for cash is the crew to send away, and storm season brings them out — PNM logged a record six major event days in 2024, most of them thunderstorm driven.
If the roof or a wall is breached, you smell gas, or anyone is injured, dial 911 and get everyone out first. After that: call (505) 306-2007, tell us PNM has been notified and whether the drop is down, and then call your insurance company.
Getting the Weight Off a Roof Without Making the Hole Bigger
The order of operations surprises most homeowners: the tree has to come off before a roofer can tarp or repair anything, and how it comes off decides whether the damage stays a section of shingles or becomes a second hole.
We start by reading what is loaded — where the root plate is lifting, which limbs are pinned under tension, which way the trunk wants to roll if it is freed carelessly — and setting an exclusion zone. Then weight comes off in planned sections, each piece tied to a rigging point before it is cut and lowered or lifted off the structure rather than dragged across it. Our boom truck does the reaching where it can get to the trunk; a tree too big or too boxed in to lower conventionally gets crane-assisted picks. Once the roof and the access are clear, your roofer or restoration contractor can tarp. We are a tree company — getting the tree off without adding to your repair bill is our half of the job.
Two local notes. Pueblo-style flat and parapet roofs carry a limb's weight differently than a pitched roof, and after a monsoon cell there is ponding water adding load on top of the tree; mention it in your request if that is your roof. And on a vehicle, the sequence is photograph, then lift — the tree comes off the car, the car never gets pulled out from under the tree. Every storm damage tree removal we run carries the same license, bond and insurance as our scheduled work.
Photograph It Before Anything Moves
Five minutes with a phone is worth more to your claim than anything you can do later. Before a single limb is moved, capture a wide shot showing the whole tree and everything it landed on; close-ups of each impact point (roof, parapet, canale, stucco, gutters, block wall, fence, and a vehicle's plate alongside its damage); the failure point itself — the uprooted root plate, the split union, the torn stub — because that is the photo showing the tree failed in wind rather than from decay nobody addressed; and any downed wire, zoomed from a safe distance, never approached. Leave timestamps on, and keep the cut sections on site until the adjuster has seen them or released you.
In general terms, with your policy always the final word: a homeowner policy typically covers removing a tree that fell on a covered structure plus the repair, often with a capped amount for debris removal; a tree that fell in the yard and hit nothing usually is not covered; and a neighbor's tree that lands on your house is typically a claim on your own policy. What we provide is the documentation side — the photos and a free written estimate for the adjuster. How removal pricing works generally is covered in our Albuquerque cost guide.
Albuquerque's Wind Keeps a Calendar, Then Ignores It
Storm work here is seasonal, and knowing the seasons is half of being ready for them.
Spring, March through May. The National Weather Service puts April and May as the windiest months of the year. Gusts reached 60–70 mph on several days in April 2024. On March 6–7, 2025, 65 mph gusts crossed the metro under a red-flag warning and put trees down citywide; on March 18, 2025 a high-wind warning left roughly 21,000 Albuquerque PNM customers dark. On February 2023, Corrales measured around 70 mph and the town of Bernalillo 77 mph, with uprooted trees and downed lines.
Monsoon, mid-June to mid-September. Outflow winds and microbursts hit canopies heavy with water and full of leaf; east-canyon winds gusted 63 mph in Albuquerque on August 8, 2024. Arroyo flash flows undercut trees standing on cut banks along Bear Canyon, Pino and Embudito, which is where many of the Heights' post-storm leaners come from.
Winter. Wet snow loads evergreens and elms that never fully dropped their leaves — a 2021 winter storm uprooted trees in the Northeast Heights, and at 6,224 feet in Moriarty a 24-to-26-inch snow year does the same work colder.
Why trees here fail in these particular ways: 60-to-90-year-old Siberian elms and pre-1994 mulberries with brittle wood and included bark across Nob Hill, Ridgecrest and the SE Heights; over-watered, shallow-rooted globe willows; the 1941-flood cottonwood cohort dropping limbs at 80 to 100 years old in the valley; Afghan pines standing in loose mesa sand. Add the 2025–26 drought, which left canopies dry, dead-wooded and top-heavy, and the March gust does the rest.
Where We Answer Storm Calls
We are based in Southeast Albuquerque, in the middle of the city's oldest canopy, and most storm work is across Albuquerque itself — the elms over the alley lines in Nob Hill, Ridgecrest, Huning Highlands and the SE Heights. Up the bajada, the Northeast Heights brings 1960s–80s elm and mulberry tracts and arroyo-side leaners. Four Hills Village sits first in line for Tijeras Canyon gap wind, strongest at night, which is why storm work there happens at odd hours. North on I-25, the town of Bernalillo has bosque-edge cottonwoods and a documented history of 70-plus mph gusts. East on I-40, Moriarty at 6,224 feet deals in snow load and hard freezes — about 40 miles out, and the honest reason arrival depends on distance. Rio Rancho, Corrales, the North and South Valley, Los Ranchos, Los Lunas, Belen and Placitas are covered by the same crews.
One honesty beat: a storm-downed tree in a sidewalk strip, median or alley is public right-of-way, which means the City Forester is involved even after a storm, and park and median trees go through 311. We will tell you which side of that line your tree failed on before anything gets cut.
After the Hazard Is Down: Cleanup and the Trees That Stayed Up
Once the immediate danger is on the ground, the rest is cleanup: limbs through the chipper, trunk wood bucked and hauled or stacked as you prefer, the driveway and gates cleared, drip lines and block walls protected while we work. Yard clean up and debris haul-off are part of what we do, not a separate outfit you have to chase.
Then there are the survivors. A cracked scaffold limb that did not quite let go, a partial uproot on a tree still standing, a pine with a broken top that Ips beetles will find by early summer, a cottonwood that shed one limb and has three more like it. Those are worth inspecting before the next front rather than after it — a tree health assessment sorts the ones that can be pruned from the ones that cannot. And if a trunk snapped off at the base, the leftover stump comes out with stump grinding, with an 811 locate filed before any root work.
Call (505) 306-2007, Any Hour
Eleven years in, over 1,000 projects, 100% of jobs done by our own crews, licensed (NM license #L1313927408), bonded and insured — that is what stands behind emergency tree removal in Albuquerque at three in the afternoon or three in the morning. Emergency service is 24/7, and we head out within about an hour, depending on distance. Call (505) 306-2007, tell us what fell and what it is sitting on, and note whether a wire is involved so we know to check with PNM on the way; a photo through the Get Free Estimate form helps if it is safe to take one.