Freezing Rain in the Deep South

Some freezing rain is falling in the Deep South this Monday morning. How do we know this? Well, first check we can take a look at the AccuWeather.com Snow/Ice/Rain radar:

That particular radar (with the black background) is available on our Pro Site, but you can get the Snow/Ice/Rain radar on AccuWeather.com. Most of our competitors don't delineate ice (freezing rain or sleet) -- they assume anything between rain and snow is a "mix". Well, you know if you've ever been trying to drive or walk on ice, there's a big difference between it and mixed snow and rain.

Radar itself doesn't report any precipitation type, but AccuWeather's proprietary algorithms look at the state of the atmosphere and its layers, which determines what type of winter weather may reach the ground. Like all weather products where one is estimating, it's not perfect, but I find that it covers freezing rain situations like this morning very well.

If you don't believe the radar (and you shouldn't always believe it, because sometimes it sees precipitation high in the air that never reaches the ground), check the official government surface observations:

In the plot above, the observation sites are at the dots and their reports of weather conditions are the letters next to the dots. Here's how to decode it:

ZL = Freezing Drizzle
ZR = Freezing Rain
UP = Unknown Precip*
S = Snow
F = Fog

*Few of the government stations use human observers these days, but rather try to tell what is falling from the sky using computer sensors. The frequently fail to determine the precipitation type in situations where sleet or freezing rain is falling.

Our forecasters also drew this easy-to-understand map this morning depicting the range of conditions from overnight to late morning. You can see that the cause of today's weather is the interaction between a high pressure system to the north and a frontal system on the Gulf coast.