What goes "Crack" in the Storm?

One evening last week, we had a thunderstorm and it was raining hard but. I had to go over to the Wheeler’s to bring in their mail. I got half way out of the subdivision and was blocked by a tree that was covering the entire road. One of our neighbors was out with his chainsaw in the rain working on the tree. He said he heard a loud cracking noise as the tree broke, so he came out to see what cause the noise and saw the downed tree. Since I could not get out, I went back home and changed my cloths, put fuel and oil in my chainsaw and went back to join in the community effort to take care of the tree. When I got there the neighbor had not made much progress because his chainsaw was pinched by pressure on the branch he was trying to cut.. His chainsaw was “wedged in great tightness”. I got out my chainsaw and cut the branch that held his chainsaw captive and then cut up the rest of the tree. He could see that my chainsaw was doing a good job, so he put his chainsaw down and decided he could most effective by moving the branches that I cut off the road. When we half way done, his wife came out in the rain with us and helped pull branches off the road. Just was we finished getting everything cleared, it stopped raining. A couple of minutes after that, another neighbor came to help.

This is a photo of the broken tree and its cut up sections at the side of the road. This is across the sink hole from our house.