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Pretty, but problematic.

While icicles may perfectly accent your wintertime home, they can be dangerous to your home's structure.

Icicles are the obvious sign your home has ice dams. Ice dams are thick ridges of ice that form at the eaves of your home. They can tear off gutters, loosen roofing shingles, and cause water to back up and pour into your house, which then causes peeling paint, warped floors, stained and sagging ceilings, and soggy insulation that loses its ability to insulate the home.

Ice dams form when heat collects in the attic and warms the roof but not the eaves. The snow melts on the warm roof and this water freezes on the cold eaves. Ice accumulates along the eaves forming a dam. Meltwater from the warm roof backs up behind the dam and flows under the shingles and into the house.

If you notice ice dams, don't climb up on the roof to hack away with a chisel or hammer. Deicing also causes problems because the salt can damage the shingles and your landscaping.

The temporary fix for ice dams is to have a professional steam the ice dams out. Or you can invest in a roof rake to remove snow before ice dams have a chance to form.

The permanent fix is to properly insulate and vent the attic under the roof. A contractor will seal all points where warm air leaks from the house into the spaces below the roof sheathing. They can increase or replace your insulation to prevent conduction and convection through the ceiling. Then they'll vent the space between the insulation and the roof sheathing so any heat that travels into the attic will be vented outside.

Another option is to install heating cables. It doesn't solve the core of the problem causing ice dams, and they cost energy to run, but they can help keep ice dams from forming.