Here in the Ohio Valley we get all types of winter weather. We have snow, we get sleet, and we get freezing rain, so let's go ahead and talk about how each of those happens. So when you have an all-snow scenario, something that we see very often here during the winter months, from the top of the cloud all the way down to here at the surface, that entire air there is all below 32º. When that happens, it's frozen all the way down to the ground and of course falls as snow. But that's not always the case. Sometimes you get an area of thin, warm air just aloft. So it falls down from the cloud as below freezing, it goes through a very brief period of melting, and then it re-freezes again about halfway down before eventually hitting the ground and bouncing as sleet. That's why we've got pellets bouncing down there. That's when you see those little ball pellets - it's not exactly snow, but it's not rain either. But then you have something called freezing rain. This can be very dangerous for the roads because it freezes on contact. It falls as below freezing, so it comes down as snow. But then it goes through a very large area of warm air so that snow melts into what's known as supercooled rain or otherwise known as freezing rain, something you will hear the WDRB team say often. This can be dangerous for when it hits the road, because when it hits the road, it freezes. And that forms, of course, black ice, something that we often see here around the Ohio Valley and something you need to be cautious of when you're out driving around here during the winter time.
WDRB Weather Explainer Blog - Snow, Sleet, and Rain
- Hannah Strong
- Updated

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