Fall Leaf Season in Tulsa: Keeping Gutters Clear
It is the third week of September and nothing has dropped yet. The pecans over Brookside are still green, the oaks along Riverside are still full, and the gutters are as clean as they are going to be until spring. This is the week to plan the fall, because in Tulsa the leaves and the ice overlap, and a gutter that is full of wet pecan leaves when the first freezing rain arrives is the one that ends up on the lawn.
The Tulsa leaf calendar
Trees here do not drop on one weekend. They stagger it across two and a half months.
| Tree | Where it is | What it drops | When |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pecan | Midtown, Brookside, older Broken Arrow, river bottoms | Leaflets, then husks, then nuts | Late Oct – early Dec |
| Post oak, red oak, bur oak | Everywhere; heaviest in midtown and south Tulsa | Large leaves, slowly; many hold into January | Nov – Jan |
| Sweetgum | 1960s–70s subdivisions | Leaves early, gumballs all winter | Oct – Nov, balls to March |
| Silver maple | Older neighborhoods | Leaves, fast and all at once | Late Oct |
| Bradford pear | 1990s–2000s subdivisions in Owasso, Bixby, Broken Arrow | Small leaves, all at once | Late Nov |
| Cottonwood, sycamore | Along the Arkansas River, Jenks, Sand Springs | Huge leaves, bark, fluff | Oct – Nov |
| Elm, hackberry | Alleys and fence lines | Small leaves, early | Oct |
The pecan is the one that runs the schedule. It drops in three waves, and the middle wave — the husks — is the worst for gutters, because the husk quarters are exactly the size that gets into a downspout and does not come out.
Why timing is harder here than most places
In a lot of the country you clean gutters once in November after the trees are bare. In Tulsa, the first ice can arrive before the trees are bare. The October 2020 ice storm came on the 26th with the pecans still in full leaf. The December 2007 storm came after the pecans had finished but with the oaks still holding. Either way, a gutter that had not been cleaned was a gutter carrying a wet, frozen mat of leaves that weighed more than any hanger was rated for.
So the honest plan for a house under heavy trees is two cleanings: one in mid-November after the pecans and maples, and one in early January after the oaks have let go, before the coldest stretch. A house under Bradford pears and a few small ornamentals can get away with one, in early December.
What to do now, in September
Look up. Walk the roofline and note which trees overhang which gutter run. The run under the pecan is the one that clogs; the run on the far side of the house may not need touching. That saves half the ladder time.
Check the downspouts before the leaves. Flush each one from the top with a hose. A downspout that is already slow in September will be plugged solid by Thanksgiving, and a plugged downspout backs up a gutter that looks clean from the ground.
Deal with limbs. Any pecan or oak limb resting on or within a couple of feet of the gutter is going to load it with leaves directly and then come down on it under ice. That is a tree company job, and September is when they have time.
Decide about guards. If you are under pecans and you are tired of two cleanings a year, guards go on cleanest gutters, which means now. Stainless micro-mesh is the only type that sheds pecan leaflets and husk fragments; a screen holds the nuts out and lets the rest in. The gutter guards page covers which type suits which tree, and guards vs. cleaning over ten years has the arithmetic.
The cleaning itself
Whether you do it or we do, the order is the same: scoop the gutter by hand into a bucket, flush the run with a hose toward the downspout, flush the downspout from the top, and check that water comes out the bottom as fast as it goes in. Blowing leaves out with a leaf blower from the roof is fast and misses the downspout entirely, which is where the problem was. Gutter cleaning is $120–$200 for a single story and $180–$300 for two, and every visit includes a look at the hangers, because fall is when we find the ones that will not survive the winter.
What we find in the leaves
A fall cleaning turns something up about one time in four. In order: a downspout elbow that has separated, a corner that has been dripping all summer on the sunny side, spike hangers backed out on a long run, and soft fascia under a corner that has overflowed for years. All of these are cheaper in November than in February after the ice has had its way with them. The gutter repair page has prices; the storm-season checklist is the walk-around to do before the leaves hide everything.
A note on the nuts
Pecan nuts and sweetgum balls roll into downspouts and jam at the first elbow. If a downspout stops draining in late November and the gutter above it looks clear, that is almost always the reason. Take the bottom elbow off, and out they come. Put a downspout strainer in the outlet only if you are prepared to clean it monthly; otherwise it becomes the clog.
Need gutter work in Tulsa?
Call for a free estimate. Mon–Sat 7am–7pm.