We had a big snowstorm two weeks ago that, among other things, led me to injure my knee whilst trying to plow the snow from our 3/8 mile long driveway. Another thing it did was destroy quite a few trees, including one of our apple trees:
It also knocked a great many branches off of trees all over our land. One tall Ponderosa Pine tree lost a lot of branches; the weight of the snow was too great and the branches broke:
What is interesting is the delamination of the wood. The rings of a tree that we see when we cut directly across the trunk represent the growth of the tree year by year. Each year it lays down a new layer. This also happens in the branches. However, consider what happens when a branch is subjected to a great deal of twisting force from the weight of the snow. Here’s a diagram I made (rather badly) that attempts to show the forces at work:
As the branch bends, the upper section is stretched, while the lower section is compressed. This creates shear between the layers, which separate if the force is great enough. This kind of separation of multiple layers is called “delamination”. Here are some of the resulting strips of pine wood:
