Communication towers on elevated terrain and tall broadcast towers can experience rime ice accumulations which are greater than the glaze ice accumulations. Building Codes such as S37 in Canada and codes in other cold weather locations do not include consideration of rime icing.
Aside from the impact of rime accumulation on tower wind loading, there is the additional hazard to people at ground level well removed from the tower site due to the ice shedding at the end of an event which can lead to serious injury in extreme cases.
To establish the potential hazard zone requires knowledge of the maximum accumulation for the event, which determines the maximum size and weight of the ice fragments, and the profile of wind speed at the time of the shedding. This data is used to determine the terminal velocity of ice fragments released at different heights on the tower, and hence the distance of travel of the ice fragment and the Kinetic Energy of the fragment at ground level.
Since the ICE Inc procedure calculates the icing and wind parameters for each event, the calculation can be used to map out the locations of greatest impact by direction from the tower, and establish hazard zones surrounding the tower.