How does an american sycamore hold up in a storm?
Sycamore took 7.1% severe damage in the ISA ice-storm survey, toward the high end, and the same study found severe damage jumps sharply on trees over 24 inches DBH — 17.1% versus 1.3% for trees under 12 inches. The failure mode is not brittleness so much as leverage: a mature sycamore rarely fails at the trunk, it releases a single thirty-foot horizontal limb, which is why the damage is so severe and why deadwooding a big one is money genuinely well spent here.
What pruning can and can't prevent
Dormant season, and do the structural work early, because sycamore grows fast and stacks a lot of weight far out on long horizontal limbs before anyone thinks to address it. The trap is the anthracnose reaction — a cool wet Indiana spring strips the tree, the homeowner panics and asks for it to be 'cleaned out,' and heavily thinning a stressed tree that is trying to refoliate is the worst possible move; let it releaf and prune the following winter.
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