Besides giving weather forecasters a big headache when trying to figure out what type of precipitation will fall from a storm, wintertime means possible icy roads and digging out from natures fury. In this column I will describe the different types of winter precipitation while in another the methods of their formation will be examined. Snow is a solid form of precipitation composed of ice crystals. Many of the ice crystals that formed in a snow cloud have combined to create the beautiful snowflakes. These flakes, shaped by nature, are usually in a complex six sided hexagonal shape.
Sleet is frozen rain.
Rain that start down from a cloud will at times freeze as it goes through a cold layer of air. This creates pellets of ice. In contrast to snow which falls as quiet flakes, sleet can be very noisy as it hits your home or car. Freezing rain falls from the cloud all the way to the ground as liquid precipitation. But as the rain hits the ground or other objects such as your car, it freezes on impact creating a sheet of ice.