What Is Freezing Rain?

Freezing rain can be dangerous because not only is it a lot trickier to navigate through compared to snow, but also because of the ice it creates can cause massive amounts of damage to power lines and and homes.

Freezing rain is the result of a warm air passing through a colder one. Usually in the winter, rain turns to snow because as it passes through the cold air above, it has time to freeze and stay as snow. However, sometimes, a warmer air mass gets in the way and produces rain up above the colder air mass. Then, the rain doesn't have enough time to freeze and remains in liquid form. As a result, when it hits the cold ground, the rain freezes on contact (thus the term freezing rain).

When looking at weather forecasting radar/satellite images, freezing rain is usually shown as a pink area--which is typically found on a front line in between a line of rain, where the warmer air is (shown on the satellite in green) and snow, where the colder part of the front is (shown on the radar/satellite in white).