Homeowners in Kirkland beat Mother Nature to the punch and chopped down five 100-foot trees on Friday before the next big windstorm could knock them down.

Both homeowners and city officials have been eying the tall trees ever since the record-breaking storm in December uprooted one tall tree and knocked it into the other. After the disastrous storm, they agreed to cut the trees down.

It was still a tricky operation with no places for the trees to fall, but homeowners came up with high-flying solution.

A Kirkland neighborhood was full of the normal sights and sounds of windstorm cleanup today with chainsaws roaring.

But there was a not so normal sight as well - the chopped trees didn't drop to the ground.

Instead, they were flying with the help of a crane.

That's because the trees are just feet from the condo buildings.

Each tree is more than 100 feet tall, around 120 years old and weighs around 15,000 pounds.

"it's complicated because you can't let anything drop anywhere. There are no drop zones," explained arborist Trent Kreeck from Northwest Arboriculture.

Misjudging the tree's weight and letting it swing could be catastrophic. There is little room for error.

"About four and a half feet," says Patrick See of See's Trees and Excavation. "No, not much room at all."

Cheryl Worlein worried in a storm, the trees would crash through both buildings in their complex.

"Some of them are tall enough they would've hit cars or houses across the street," she said.

It could have been the next windstorm disaster. But instead, the trees fly over their homes, not into them.

The tree-cutting companies that cut down the Kirkland trees say they're booked into May. They say most of the jobs they're handling are connected to our December storm.