Hello from Central TX! A few weeks ago, we got tons of pillowy, perfect snow for the 1st time in my life.
This weekend, we are getting dangerous freezing rain. What conditions create freezing rain instead of wonderful snow?
In: Physics
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.
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