In contrast to the warm season where all we have is rain and possible hail, during the winter we can experience rain, snow, sleet, and freezing rain. 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.