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.”
If its winter, you walk outside and the precipitation is very loud and stings like hell when it hits you it’s sleet.
That’s hail.
It doesn’t hail in the winter, and hail is larger. Hail comes down in pellets due to the fact that it’s made by water droplets falling down, getting blown back up into a cold cloud, freezing, getting blown back up to freeze some more, and so on until it’s heavy enough to overcome the updraft and fall to the ground. Sleet is like rain that freezes as its falling, but doesn’t become the soft gentle snow, and the difference between sleet and freezing rain is that freezing rain is liquid until it hits a frozen surface.
Around here, we just call that freezing rain.
Freezing rain to me is water that freezes on impact, and it very quickly becomes a problem for trees and roofs and everything.
Yes, around here the difference between freezing rain and sleet is that freezing rain is liquid until it lands and it freezes on contact with a cold surface and sleet is solid as it comes down.