Definitely cut the spent flowers off. The weight of the snow can not only cause branches to break, but once I had the trunk of the tree split in half from the snow weight completely ruining it.

Perhaps it’s the specific cultivar or perhaps the difference difference between hydrangeas pruned to tree form vs ones left in their natural shrubby form, but I haven’t ever had branches break on my shrub form panicled hydrangeas, though heavy wet snows or ice storms along with seasons that had up to 8’ or so of accumulatoon. If you are concerned, I would remove the flower heads, but based on my experience it hasn’t been an issue in my garden over 9 winters.

Thank you all, I think I will go out and cut the heads off. How far down should I go?

The cultivar can make a difference as quickfire or pinky winky with it’s less dense flowerhead will be less susceptible (though not immune) to snow / ice damage if flowers are left on.

VS has dense flowers so it is very susceptible to the damage I described, if flowers left on overwinter.

I would just take off the flower head. If you want to do a harder prune I would wait till late winter/early spring.

So how much snow do you get in that area?

It depends but last year we had 88 inches throughout dec. to march.

God, how long did it take to melt?

" I think I will go out and cut the heads off. How far down should I go?"

All I do is run a closed hand up each stem and the flowers pull right off exactly where mother nature wants them to.

Luis, we go away to warmer climates for three months but when we came back in April it was still snowing and there was about one foot left in our yard.

It just started today , I knew I should have gone out yesterday to prune. Oh well I will go out today for sure.

thanks cearbhaill for that tip. I will try it.