AA-2026-A44D12
On the image
Somewhere in the 1960s an ice storm did what every ice storm does: it turned an ordinary backyard fence and a scraggly bush into something a homeowner briefly mistook for beautiful before remembering the driveway needed shoveling. The lattice porch skirting behind the branches has vanished under a half-inch glaze, and the twigs, no longer bearing any resemblance to twigs, have become glass sculptures holding their own reflections.
Someone stepped outside with a camera before the sun could ruin the effect, which is the correct instinct, since freezing rain photographs beautifully and behaves terribly. The pine bough in the foreground, still green and unbothered, seems to be the only living thing in frame that hasn't been personally offended by the weather. Within a day, gravity and a rising thermometer would settle the argument, the way they always do.
This is the domestic version of a natural disaster, the kind that never makes the news but reliably breaks a tree limb over somebody's car. The camera doesn't know that; it just records the branches looking like they've been dipped in liquid glass, a few hours before they weren't.
The historian's note
Ice storms of this kind were, and remain, a routine winter hazard across the northern and midwestern United States, caused by rain falling through a subfreezing layer near the ground and freezing on contact with any exposed surface. Residential properties with wood lattice porch skirting and mixed plantings of evergreen and deciduous shrubs, as shown here, were typical of suburban development in the postwar decades.
Home photography of storm damage and weather events was a common amateur practice by the 1960s, as color slide film and inexpensive cameras made it easy for homeowners to document conditions for insurance purposes or simple record-keeping. Such images, while rarely tied to a specific named storm, form a documentary record of vernacular domestic life and regional climate patterns of the period.
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Ice-Coated Branches After Freezing Rain, Suburban Backyard, 1960s. 1960–1969. Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library, AA-2026-A44D12. https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/ice-coated-branches-after-freezing-rain-suburban-backyard-1960s.
@misc{aaAA2026A44D12,
title = {Ice-Coated Branches After Freezing Rain, Suburban Backyard, 1960s},
year = {1960–1969},
howpublished = {Archive \& Atlas, Historical Image Library},
note = {Accession AA-2026-A44D12},
url = {https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/ice-coated-branches-after-freezing-rain-suburban-backyard-1960s}
}TY - ART TI - Ice-Coated Branches After Freezing Rain, Suburban Backyard, 1960s PY - 1960–1969 PB - Archive & Atlas, Historical Image Library AN - AA-2026-A44D12 UR - https://thearchive.archiveandatlas.com/library/ice-coated-branches-after-freezing-rain-suburban-backyard-1960s ER -
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