Caution.... Freezing Rain Ahead

Freezing rain is on its way here. Ice storm warnings and winter weather advisories are now in effect in the southeast. These go through 9pm Wednesday. Those areas can expect a tenth to a quarter of an inch of ice and an inch or so of snow/sleet accumulation. Other areas could see a little freezing drizzle and then some light snow and sleet.

We keep talking about it but what exactly is freezing rain. Freezing rain is rain that falls and freezes on contact with anything at the surface. What happens is precipitation falls out of the clouds as snow. But there is a layer of the atmosphere somewhere between the cloud and the surface that is above freezing and melts the snow into rain. Once the precipitation is all rain, it cannot refreeze back to snow so it falls on the surface as rain. It takes very little freezing rain to cause problems from slick roads to power outages. Hopefully we can keep the ice accumulation as low as possible.

~KDLT Meteorologist Cody Matz