The lower atmosphere changes temperature rapidly with height, sometimes it’ll act as a “sandwich” where there’s two very cold layers with a warm layer in the middle. We call this a “warm nose”. How deep it is changes the precipitation type. If it extends almost to the ground then you end up with frozen rain because the snow doesn’t have time to refreeze after it melts in the warm nose, however the ground it still below freezing so the water freezes as soon as it comes into contact with a surface. If the warm nose is shallow then sometimes the snow doesn’t melt fully and you get sleet or slushy snow on the ground.
Along with what others have said. You can have above freezing temps for rain like 35 or 36 F and get a bunch of rain. Then while the ground and streets are still very wet from the recent rain you have a sudden plunge in temp within a few hours. Like from 35 to 20. Resulting in all that water covering everything suddenly freezing. Coating quite literally everything in a sheet of ice.
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