Here's more than you probably ever wanted to know about sleet.
Definitions of sleet on the Web:
- precipitate as a mixture of rain and snow; "If the temperature rises above freezing, it will probably sleet"
- partially melted snow (or a mixture of rain and snow)
- Whereas hail forms within clouds, sleet begins as snow falling to earth after having left its originating cloud. The snow partially melts on its trip down in a layer of warm air but then refreezes into ice crystals that appear much like hail.
- Depending on the region, precipitation of rain or snow mixed, or rain and hail, or rain and ice pellets, or melting snow, or sudden and brief rainfall with wind and hail.
- Rain that turns to ice pellets before reaching the ground. Sleet also causes roads to freeze and become slippery.
- A type of frozen precipitation, consisting of small transparent pellets.
- Frozen or partly frozen rain.
- Precipitation consisting of transparent pellets of ice, 5 millimeters or less in diameter. Also called ice pellets. Forms when snow enters a warm layer of air above the surface and melts and then enters a deep layer of sub freezing air on the surface and refreezes.
- Describes solid grains of ice formed by the freezing of raindrops or the refreezing of largely melted snowflakes. These grains usually bounce upon impact with the ground or pavement. Heavy sleet is a relatively rare event defined as an accumulation of ice pellets covering the ground to a depth of 1/2" or more. See Ice Pellets.
- also called ice pellets. Sleet is formed when raindrops or melted snowflakes freeze as they pass through a below-freezing layer of air near the earth's surface. Sleet does not normally stick to trees and wires, and usually bounces on hitting the ground. An accumulation of sleet often has the consistency of dry sand.
- Frozen or partially frozen rain that form when rain passes through a layer of air that is below the freezing temperature, falls to earth as a slush. Freshwater.
- a form of precipitation in which droplets are partially frozen as water-ice (or water-snow) mixture.
- in the US, a term used to describe tiny ice pellets that are formed when rain or partially melted snowflakes refreeze before reaching the ground. Colloquial usage of the term coincides with British usage, which defines sleet as a mixture of rain and snow.
- Frozen precipitation that results when rain drops freeze while falling, before hitting the ground. This occurs when rain falls through a layer of colder air underlying a layer of warmer air. See Temperature Inversion.
- 1. See ice pellets. 2. In British terminology, and colloquially in some parts of the United States, precipitation in the form of a mixture of rain and snow.
- Sleet is frozen precipitation falling as ice pellets. Ice pellets occur when snowflakes melt into raindrops as they pass through a thin layer of warmer air. The raindrops then refreeze into particles of ice when they fall into a layer of sub-freezing air near the surface of the earth.
- precipitation which is a mixture of rain and ice.