How does an eastern redbud hold up in a storm?
Redbud ranks resistant on Midwest ice-damage lists and the crown is too small and too short to threaten a roof, so it rarely generates a storm call at all. Its actual structural weakness is the low, wide, multi-stemmed habit full of tight V-shaped forks with included bark — those split under wet snow or a heavy glaze, and once a redbud splits at the base union there is usually no tree left worth saving.
What pruning can and can't prevent
Prune right after bloom in May, before the leaves fully expand — you can still read the structure, you are not cutting off next spring's flowers, and dormant cuts are awkward on a tree that branches this low and irregularly. The species-specific trap is sanitation: Botryosphaeria canker is redbud's worst problem, so every dieback cut has to land well below the sunken, cracked, discolored bark and into clean wood, and the saw gets disinfected between cuts or you spread it yourself.
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