What are the differences, if any, between freezing rain and glazed ice? Well as far as I can see the end results are the same, surfaces covered with clear ice, but whereas freezing rain comes from supercooled water, glazed ice (also widely known as clear or black ice) doesn’t. At this point I would normally cite the Wiki entry for freezing rain and another for glazed ice, but I won’t because the authors have clearly mixed up information about the two and also the processes that cause them. Suffice it to say, from someone who remembers well the freezing rain in March 1969, and walked along an avenue of trees that suffered the effects in the hills above Sheffield, I beleive freezing rain occurs much more rarely than glazed ice does, and the Meteorological Glossary makes the distinction between the two clear. The media isn’t at all interested in the difference between the two of course, and it’s rather like if we have fog and temperatures are below freezing then it must be freezing fog – wrong again – but that’s a story for another day.
