Question

Small pellets of ice held in a hand.
On a cold day, you go outside after a rainstorm and find pellets of ice on the ground. The pellets are all around 3 millimeters in diameter.

Which type of precipitation are these pellets?

snow
hail
sleet
freezing rain

Answer 1

Sleet — those are ice pellets. Sleet typically falls as small hard ice pellets around 2–5 mm in diameter. Hail is usually larger and layered, snow is flakes, and freezing rain is liquid that freezes on contact (glaze), not pellets.