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.”
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.