They are calling for severe winter weather here in our beautiful, Southern city. You know what that means? Everyone drop what you are doing and head to the nearest Harris Teeter for bread, milk and toilet paper. It is very possible that we may be trapped in our homes for up to 8 full hours.
Of course the buzz around the office is the weather as we hear of school closings and parents scramble to figure out how to juggle around their children today. However, one of the funniest moment comes from a co-worker who stated that hail had already begun to fall in South Charlotte during the morning rush hour. You read that right, hail. I had to giggle and correct this co-worker by telling them the correct term is sleet. It is a winter storm after all and sleet was in the forecast. But they held tight to their guns and said it was little pellets of ice and that was hail or maybe freezing rain.
I obviously didn’t let it go and found the below definition of hail, sleet and freezing rain. Enjoy the weather lesson because my co-worker didn’t. Happy Friday!
The Difference between Hail, Sleet, and Freezing Rain
Many times I hear people say during a winter storm that it is hailing. This is actually called sleet. Hail normally occurs in thunderstorms and is the result of strong updrafts that repeatedly carry growing chunks of ice upwards into the clouds. Once the hail stones become too heavy to be lifted by the updrafts, they fall to the ground. Hail stones are normally much larger than sleet pellets and they can cause damage to crops, windshields, people, etc. Sleet occurs during a winter storm and is caused by rain falling into a cold layer of air aloft which has to be below freezing. As the raindrops fall through the cold layer of air, they freeze and become small ice pellets. When they hit your car windshield or your windows at home, they can make quite a racket. Sleet can accumulate on the roads and sidewalks making driving and walking quite hazardous. Freezing rain is basically rain that falls onto the ground and then freezes AFTER it hits the ground. It causes a glaze of ice on trees and any surface that is below freezing. Freezing rain causes the most hazardous of driving and walking conditions. Freezing rain is what causes the power outages as a result of the ice that forms on the trees and power lines making them so heavy that they come down. A temperature inversion causes the conditions that result in freezing rain. This means that it is warmer aloft than it is at the surface. (www.weatherdudes.com)
