What To Expect From Winter Precipitation

What form of Winter Precipitation do you encounter where you live?

It’s necessary to be prepared for winter precipitation if you live in an region that is prone to have inclement weather.

I live in the southern part of Missouri and over the past few years we have not had an abundance of snow. However, we have had a significant about of freezing rain and sleet.

4 Common Types of Winter Precipitation 

RAIN(cold rain) is liquid precipitation that reaches the surface in the form of drops that are greater than 0.5 millimeters in diameter. The intensity of rain is determined by the accumulation over a given time. Categories of rain are light, moderate and heavy.

Rain develops when growing cloud droplets become too heavy to remain in the cloud and as a result, fall toward the surface as rain.

Rain can also begin as ice crystals that collect each other to form large snowflakes. As the falling snow passes through the freezing level into warmer air, the flakes melt and collapse into rain drops.

FREEZING RAIN – Freezing rain falls just like normal rain only it freezes on contact with roads, trees, power lines and other structures since temperatures are 32 degrees or below at the surface.

Even light accumulations may cause dangerous travel while heavier amounts can be damaging.

Freezing rain occurs when snow falls into a warm layer and melts, but the freezing layer is very shallow, so the liquid water falls onto surfaces that are below freezing and solidifies, resulting in an even coating of ice on streets, trees, cars, and power lines.

SNOW – Snow is an aggregate of ice crystals that form into flakes. Snow forms at temperatures below freezing. For snow to reach the earth’s surface the entire temperature profile in the troposphere needs to be at or below freezing.

It can be slightly above freezing in some layers if the layer is not warm or deep enough the melt the snow flakes much.

The intensity of snow is determined by the accumulation over a given time. Categories of snow are light, moderate and heavy.

SLEET –  Sleet is frozen precipitation that falls as ice pellets that you may see bouncing off your windshield, roof or the ground. Depending on the intensity and duration, sleet can accumulate much like you see with snow. 

Sleet is pellets of ice that form when snow falls into a warm layer and melts into rain.  The rain then falls into a freezing layer of air that is deep enough to refreeze the raindrops into pellets.  Sometimes the snow does not completely melt and the partially melted snowflakes refreeze into snow pellets.

Another form of precipitation I’ll mention is hail even though it’s not necessarily a form of winter precipitation it can surely cause a lot of damage.

HAIL – Hailstones are large chunks of ice that fall from large thunderstorms.  They are highly damaging to crops, easily earning the nickname “the white plague”.  Violent thunderstorms have very strong updrafts that are strong enough to hold ice aloft against the pull of gravity.  

The opaque layers are created when the hail is in the colder section of the cloud, or gets caught in the downdrafts, and the super-cooled droplets freeze onto the hail so quickly tiny air bubbles get trapped, causing the ice to look milky. 

When the hail falls into the warmer portion of the cloud, or into the warm updrafts, the super-cooled droplets freeze slowly enough that the tiny air bubbles have time to escape before the water freezes, resulting in a sheet of clear ice.   Hail can range in size from the diameter of a pea to larger than a grapefruit.

Be prepared for the winter precipitation. Check with
your local Highway Department for road conditions
before taking a trip.

Above all…BE SAFE!

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