Winter storm warning

We’re under a winter storm warning now through 6am tomorrow 😛 They actually decided to put it into effect about 10:15ish – an hour and 45 minutes early.  They still expect us to get about 4 inches of snow and between 1/4" and 1/2" inch of ice, in addition to sustained winds between 25 and 30mph with gusts as high as 35 or 40mph.  This is making the weather guys in the area (and at the national weather service) worried about power outages.  We’re not expected to warm up enough at the surface to turn precip to rain until it’s almost all over.  I also finally figured out the mechanism behind freezing rain.  Essentially, you have well below freezing temperatures at the surface and above freezing temperatures in the upper layers of the atmosphere and then of course the clouds.  So in the clouds, the droplets start as ice crystals, then melt as they fall through the warmer layers of the atmosphere, and then freeze again as they reach the surface.  Typically, there’s not enough time for the water droplets to refreeze before hitting the ground.  That’s the difference between freezing rain and sleet – with sleet the warm air layer is higher up (whether that’s because it’s smaller to begin with or because the cold air at the surface extends farther up), allowing the water droplet to refreeze into an ice pellet before hitting the ground. 

Worst case scenario at this point for us would be to have heaviest and most intense precip to fall as freezing rain and not snow.