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.”
Come to think of it, I’ve never really bothered thinking about what sleet is. I’ve always just put it in the “you know it when you see it” category.
If I pummel my brain for what I would describe it as, I’d say it’s wet, heavy snow in a wind. Like “really soft hail” I suppose.
But yeah…I never bothered. Interesting thought experiment for myself.
Where are you from? Based on your and OPs descriptions I’m guessing a Commonwealth country.
Being from the U.S. I’d have described it as frozen drops of rain.
Canada.
“Frozen drops of rain” makes sense too. I picture it as, “Imagine a raindrop hits your windshield, and instead of thunking like a raindrop, it’s kind of splats like a tiny tiny snowball.” That’s sleet.
In the U.S. sleet bounces off the windshield instead. I think we’d call Canadian sleet wet snow. OP said we’d call it “wintry mix” which maybe some of us would but I always thought “wintry mix” was when you were on the line between snow and rain and you just got a bit of everything; snow, sleet, slush, freezing rain, etc…
From Ohio, and to me sleet is several things
Wet snow/rain mix
Tiny frozen spheres that aren’t big enough to be called hail
Snow/tiny hail mix
Any combination of the three, really.
Mostly it boils down to “not snow or rain or hail”, and “wintry mix” is something I never heard until adulthood.
If its winter, you walk outside and the precipitation is very loud and stings like hell when it hits you it’s sleet.
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.
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.
Soft hail is called graupel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graupel
We called it hominy snow growing up. Always loved the sound it made.