In the US “sleet” is the term for a winter precipitation that occurs when snow falls through a layer of warm air and melts into water droplets, then re-freezes into ice pellets as it passes through colder air closer to the ground. In many other areas that were part of the British empire that precipitation is called “ice pellets” and “sleet” instead refers to a mix of snow and rain. In the US that’s called a “wintry mix.”
I didn’t know it required a freeze-thaw-freeze cycle either. I’d always been under the impression it was just rain that froze before hitting the ground.
It technically does, it just happens 2 or three more times than we thought. TIL
is when there is sudden downpour of slut (plural)
Hah, have you ever noticed that the meaning of “quite” is quite different depending on whether the person saying it is from USA or from England? :) On one side of the pond it means the same as “somewhat”, while on the other side it means “very”.
Quite.
Who uses it to mean “somewhat”? I’ve only heard it used to mean very/indeed/enough/completely, consistently between both the US and UK.
Im here in the Midwest and sleet here is anything with a gas station slushy consistency as it’s falling. It’s slush on the ground, but sleet in the air.
I’m in Ontario and would agree. But I’d also call say it’s sleet if it’s little ice pellets that move like sand. Probably because when it happens (which us rare for us) it oscillates between the phases several times in the same storm.
Why are people out here calling graupel “sleet” or “ice pellets”? We’ve already got a perfectly good word for graupel. =D
What the hell is graupel?
It has no meaning to me.
I would call the frozen raindrop thing hail and the snowy watery thing sleet. I’m from the UK.
I would say the same and I’m from the southern US. Everyone I know would say the same. I’ve never heard anyone, IRL or the news or online, say hail is sleet.
Hail is formed through a completely different process and is a spring/summer precip type associated with thunderstorms. It forms as water gets lifted high into the atmosphere from updrafts in the thunderstorm then fall before getting lifted again. Hail often shows layers (like a jawbreaker) and can grow very large.
In the US, sleet/graupel is essentially just a frozen raindrop and is a winter precip type. Wintry mix is what the US National Weather Service uses for any mix of rain, snow, sleet, graupel, and freezing rain. The WMO and Europe use Ice Pellets for frozen raindrops and Sleet for mixed rain and snow. So both are official terms depending on where you are.
Yes! This is also my understanding. I’ve even experienced hail in hot tropical countries.
But to the layman, attempting to describe balls of ice falling from the sky, and not the process that formed them, is there any practical distinction to be made between ice pellets and hail?
To the layman: sleet=tiny ice. Hail=big ice.
I will NOT hail big ICE. They can go fuck themselves!
Yes, hail is from thunderstorms and is generally larger, ice pellets are winter precipitation and almost always smaller. Hail usually lasts only a few minutes, ice pellets can last many hours.
Sleet is basically crunchy snow. Very slightly larger, a bit harder, not really a danger to much of anything it falls on. You don’t get golf ball sized sleet, you get like, half-a-pea-sized sleet.
I’m in the US and I completely agree
I had to go looking to see if there was a distinction. There is!
Hail is a form of solid precipitation.[1] It is distinct from ice pellets (American English “sleet”), though the two are often confused.[2] It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone.[3] Ice pellets generally fall in cold weather, while hail growth is greatly inhibited during low surface temperatures.
Unlike other forms of water ice precipitation, such as graupel (which is made of rime ice), ice pellets (which are smaller and translucent), and snow (which consists of tiny, delicately crystalline flakes or needles), hailstones usually measure between 5 mm (0.2 in) and 15 cm (6 in) in diameter.[1] The METAR reporting code for hail 5 mm (0.20 in) or greater is GR, while smaller hailstones and graupel are coded GS.
Wild to assume the entire US agrees on much of anything.
As someone from the U.S. I have never heard of “wintry mix”. I currently live on the west coast, but I always grew up that wet mix of snow/rain/water on the ground as “slush”. Each country has its own regional dialects
That’s the NOAA/NWS term I think (this is apple weather)
intresting. was looking and asking around, it seem, (agian as a person who lives in a west coast area where we get about 0 snow). “Wintry mox” seems like it might be used to mean a combo of rain/sleet/snow, so while the “ice pellets” are still called “sleet” you might say its “wintry mix” bcs there might be sleet/snow/rain on the ground or around.
Snow - snow Rain - rain Sleet - sleet Winters mix - any combination above
Sleet has always been the slushy stuff near me. Hail is the hard frozen ice pellets that can crack a windshield. I don’t know what OP is talking about.
I’m from the US, and I use sleet in the manner Commonwealth countries do.
If someone told me about ice pellets id persume they meant the fancy lil ice cubes, but also y’all say “pass me the fairy liquid” and be talking about soap.
Come to think of it, I’ve never really bothered thinking about what sleet is. I’ve always just put it in the “you know it when you see it” category.
If I pummel my brain for what I would describe it as, I’d say it’s wet, heavy snow in a wind. Like “really soft hail” I suppose.
But yeah…I never bothered. Interesting thought experiment for myself.
Where are you from? Based on your and OPs descriptions I’m guessing a Commonwealth country.
Being from the U.S. I’d have described it as frozen drops of rain.
Canada.
“Frozen drops of rain” makes sense too. I picture it as, “Imagine a raindrop hits your windshield, and instead of thunking like a raindrop, it’s kind of splats like a tiny tiny snowball.” That’s sleet.
In the U.S. sleet bounces off the windshield instead. I think we’d call Canadian sleet wet snow. OP said we’d call it “wintry mix” which maybe some of us would but I always thought “wintry mix” was when you were on the line between snow and rain and you just got a bit of everything; snow, sleet, slush, freezing rain, etc…
From Ohio, and to me sleet is several things
Wet snow/rain mix
Tiny frozen spheres that aren’t big enough to be called hail
Snow/tiny hail mix
Any combination of the three, really.
Mostly it boils down to “not snow or rain or hail”, and “wintry mix” is something I never heard until adulthood.
Soft hail is called graupel.
If its winter, you walk outside and the precipitation is very loud and stings like hell when it hits you it’s sleet.
In US Pacific Northwest and never in my life have I heard of “ice pellets” or “wintry mix”
Where I’m at in the NW US, the icy pellets are called ‘graupel’, the slushy snow/rain is “sleet”. Sometimes the weather guys call it “wintry mix” but I haven’t heard it outside that.
That’s just 2 English speaking countries, what about the others? Your title sounds like every English speaking country has a different meaning for the word ‘sleet’.
I guess in Zimbabwean English (spoken by more than 5 million people) doesn’t mean neither, as it doesn’t snow there. Do Canadians use the American or European meaning? This TIL raises more questions than it answers.
We use the British meaning. Yanks went their own way on this one.
