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.”
I would call the frozen raindrop thing hail and the snowy watery thing sleet. I’m from the UK.
Hail is formed through a completely different process and is a spring/summer precip type associated with thunderstorms. It forms as water gets lifted high into the atmosphere from updrafts in the thunderstorm then fall before getting lifted again. Hail often shows layers (like a jawbreaker) and can grow very large.
In the US, sleet/graupel is essentially just a frozen raindrop and is a winter precip type. Wintry mix is what the US National Weather Service uses for any mix of rain, snow, sleet, graupel, and freezing rain. The WMO and Europe use Ice Pellets for frozen raindrops and Sleet for mixed rain and snow. So both are official terms depending on where you are.
But to the layman, attempting to describe balls of ice falling from the sky, and not the process that formed them, is there any practical distinction to be made between ice pellets and hail?
Sleet is basically crunchy snow. Very slightly larger, a bit harder, not really a danger to much of anything it falls on. You don’t get golf ball sized sleet, you get like, half-a-pea-sized sleet.
To the layman: sleet=tiny ice. Hail=big ice.
I will NOT hail big ICE. They can go fuck themselves!
Yes, hail is from thunderstorms and is generally larger, ice pellets are winter precipitation and almost always smaller. Hail usually lasts only a few minutes, ice pellets can last many hours.
Yes! This is also my understanding. I’ve even experienced hail in hot tropical countries.
I would say the same and I’m from the southern US. Everyone I know would say the same. I’ve never heard anyone, IRL or the news or online, say hail is sleet.
I’m in the US and I completely agree
I had to go looking to see if there was a distinction. There is!
Hail is a form of solid precipitation.[1] It is distinct from ice pellets (American English “sleet”), though the two are often confused.[2] It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone.[3] Ice pellets generally fall in cold weather, while hail growth is greatly inhibited during low surface temperatures.
Unlike other forms of water ice precipitation, such as graupel (which is made of rime ice), ice pellets (which are smaller and translucent), and snow (which consists of tiny, delicately crystalline flakes or needles), hailstones usually measure between 5 mm (0.2 in) and 15 cm (6 in) in diameter.[1] The METAR reporting code for hail 5 mm (0.20 in) or greater is GR, while smaller hailstones and graupel are coded GS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail