Cold rain began icing on stop signs, cars and trees in western parts of North Texas on Wednesday morning, and the potential more wintry mix remained for the rest of the day and into Thursday morning.
So you might be wondering: Is it freezing rain or sleet? Or both?
First off, there is a difference.
Freezing rain is what we saw Wednesday morning – a normal (albeit, cold) rain that freezes on contact, whether that's the ground, a leaf, a mailbox or a car.
Sleet is when the rain is already frozen as it's falling. So if you feel tiny pellets of ice falling, that's sleet. If it's just plain old cold rain – and then freezes after it hits the ground – that's freezing rain.
As the National Weather Service explains, sleet forms when snowflakes partially melt as they fall into a warmer layer of air on their way to the ground. Freezing rain happens when the droplets of rain fall through a warm layer of air and melt completely, before freezing in the cold air on the ground.