I've been lucky with my quads handling the wind and ice here on the shores of Lake Erie.The fiberglass spreaders I'm using aren't tapered like the old Comet/Shooting Star design, but are solid straight fiberglass. Actually they are golf course flagsticks from a local course that was replacing theirs. I once had a temporarily mounted two element quad get away from me during the tuning phase and it hit my garage roof with one of the spreaders end on. About a foot of it went through the roof, but the spreader itself was undamaged. Another local antenna builder uses paracord on his quads as supports. He strings the paracord around the spreader about halfway between the boom hubs and the wire loops, about where the glass spreaders and the aluminum tubing are joined. He then coats the p-cord with either fiberglass resin or epoxy for added strength. Seems to work well for him, I'm not aware of any of his quads coming down from storm damage. YMMV.