Lindsey Rustad is an ice sculptor. But she doesn’t make the swans you see at weddings or corporate events. She makes ice storms in forests. Her designs, like those in nature, glisten and evoke wonder. But they also foretell danger. With increasing evidence that climate change is driving more frequent and severe weather events, likely including ice storms, she wants to find out what that means for the health of the forest.
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| Icicles on branches. |
Ice storms can be immensely destructive. Frozen limbs, dragged down by the weight of ice, can break, landing on cars, power lines, homes and people. In the United States, such storms cause an estimated 60 percent of winter storm losses, and — here and in Canada — billions of dollars in damage. In January 1998, a massive ice storm devastated parts of northern New England, northern New York and southeast Canada, and a 2008 ice storm in China killed 129 people.
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