Environment
Now Is the Winter of the Terrifying Icicles
Falling ice across North America has crushed cars, bloodied pedestrians, started fires, and pancaked a poor dog.
The cold sucks, but there's also a downside to thawing out: ice shards dislodging from their perches and crushing cars and laying pedestrians out in bloody heaps.
Ice-bombs are a seasonal danger in any northern city—in Chicago, it's a tradition to put yellow warning signs at the base of rime-crusted skyscrapers—but this year, they're really falling fast and furious in the United States. That's due to a long-lasting rash of bitter cold and heavy snow, which allowed icicles and rooftop ice dams to grow big and plentiful. (Think of icicles as tall as a four-story building and as thick as an elephant's leg.)