the.com/sleetfall
the moment rain commits to nothing and punishes everyone for its indecision
means The falling of sleet — that wet mix of rain and partly frozen ice pellets descending from the sky.
from A transparent compound of "sleet" plus "fall," built on the same pattern as "snowfall" and "rainfall." "Sleet" itself is the old half of the pairing, traceable to Middle English "slete" and likely related to Germanic words for the same miserable wet-ice precipitation — compare dialectal German "Schlosse" (hailstone) and similar northern European cousins. "Fall," from Old English "feallan," simply names the downward motion. Put them together and you get a word that does exactly what it says: sleet, falling.
- identity crisis
- part rain, part snow, fully unwelcome
- physics
- raindrops freezing mid-fall through cold air layers
- road menace
- causes more crashes than heavy snow
- sound
- that distinct hiss-tap against windows
denver colorado march 2003 — spring sleet and snow event that paralyzed the city with 24+ inches mixed precipitation