Weather Words: Freezing Rain Vs. Sleet

When winter storms roll in, precipitation can take different forms depending on how the air is layered from the clouds to the ground. Two common types that often confuse people are freezing rain and sleet. Though they might look similar at first, they behave very differently and have very different impacts.

Sleet occurs when snowflakes fall through a thin layer of above-freezing air high in the atmosphere, partially melt, and then refreeze into small, hard ice pellets before reaching the ground. These pellets bounce when they hit surfaces and typically accumulate as a layer of icy “gravel” on roads and sidewalks. Sleet is usually easier to remove than freezing rain and, while slippery, it doesn’t coat surfaces as uniformly.

Freezing rain, on the other hand, happens when snowflakes melt completely into raindrops in a warm layer of air and then pass through a very shallow layer of cold air just above the ground. Instead of refreezing midair like sleet, the raindrops freeze on contact with cold surfaces, forming a smooth, transparent glaze of ice. This makes freezing rain particularly dangerous — it can coat roads, power lines, and tree branches, creating hazardous driving conditions and the risk of power outages.

The key difference is simple: sleet freezes before hitting the ground, while freezing rain freezes after hitting the ground. Meteorologists pay close attention to temperature layers in the atmosphere to predict which one will fall during a winter storm, because the impacts on travel and safety can be dramatically different.

Jennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world's biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.