Ice pellets are a form of
precipitation consisting of small,
translucent balls of ice. Ice pellets are smaller than
hailstones which form in
thunderstorms rather than in winter, and are different from
graupel ("soft hail") which is made of frosty white
rime, and from
a mixture of rain and snow which is a
slushy liquid or semisolid. Ice pellets often bounce when they hit the ground or other solid objects, and make a higher-pitched "tap" when striking objects like
jackets,
windshields, and
dried leaves, compared to the dull splat of liquid raindrops. Pellets generally do not freeze into a solid mass unless mixed with
freezing rain. The
METAR code for ice pellets is
PL (
PE before November 1998).