#658 Vaguely Sleetish

So the other day it was sleeting.
I think.
To tell you the truth, what sleet is has always been a little vague in my brain. Unlike the Inuit, I never had the opportunity to find a reason to have over 2,000 words for snow.
I was a desert boy and snow was a rare and remarkable experience in my early life, notable purely for its existence, never mind that there were different types and gradations thereof. The difference between snow and not snow was like the difference between food and, oh, say, hunger. I worried about types of snow no more than a starving man cares about his next meal being vegetable, fruit, grain, or nut.
So my experience with sleet is largely deductive. It doesn’t appear to be a flake, therefore it must not be snow.
This deduction is largely based on how it hits my windshield. Fine grains of snow tend to blow off. Large, wet flakes tend to stick after splitching in a tacky fashion. The occasional quick splotches mixed with raindrops are assumed to be sleet.
I think of sleet as being more icy, but that really is no description at all. Snow is, after all, ice crystals.
I know that sleet is not as hard as hail, nor as noisy.
But still. Just the word sleet makes it sound as if it’s harder and edgier than snow.
When I hear other people identifying sleet, what they are talking about appears to be slush. Slush is definitely softer—and splitchier on my windshield.
But for them, slush seems to be a word reserved for what’s on the ground, after snow has melted. It’s often hidden beneath a hard crust of apparently powdery snow. Only to be revealed when you step on it, break through the crust, and have your ankles suddenly identify with flash-frozen salmon.
When I read about it in books, I used to imagine sleet as being these miniature flying ice splinters. Like tiny icicles ready to puncture with pinprick ferocity those foolish enough to go out into the sleet storm.
But now it appears sleet is nothing more than flying slush.
No more intimidating than Slurpees on the wing.
America, ya gotta love it