Actual freezing rain - as in supercooled water freezing instantly on contact with any surface - is exceptionally rare in the UK. It happened during the Beast earlier this year and I still have the photos of a glaze-covered house to prove it. The last time it happened before then was in the 80s IMBY.

For whatever reason, the media and the population at large seem to refer to normal rain landing on a frozen surface, causing ice, as freezing rain. It's not. If there is proper freezing rain being reported then yes, that's interesting indeed!

I've a feeling it's going to be the same here. It's taking such a long time to arrive that the dewpoint has risen to -0.7C already - and I suspect it'll go above zero pretty quickly once the precipitation arrives.

Met Office symbols - do they even recognise freezing rain as it suggests snow all the way here? The air aloft seems too warm for snow.

They don't have a symbol for freezing rain. IIRC in spring they just had rain symbols at -1 or -2, as was the case with the xcweather forecast (which uses GFS). The Meteociel precipitation type charts showed freezing rain (again, from GFS) and that's what we had!

The MetO forecast for Leeds has rain at zero degrees at 3PM, FWIW.

(Those forecasts for down here have been chopping and changing every 3 hours today!)

They don't seem to have a symbol for it, I suppose given its rarity.

The Finnish Met use the following:

FWIW the latest MetO automated for here is quite bizarre as well. Heavy snow at 3pm, 1c. Heavy rain from 5pm to 8pm, 0c, then heavy snow again at 8pm, 1c.

Freezing drizzle has a comma (drizzle)

Glaze is just the squiggle.

Wish I could post an image in here

Yep, but it's not part of their online list:

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/guide/weather/symbols#weathersymbols

Indeed, they don't use synop report symbols on weather forecasts. There is no Met Office (or BBC, for that matter) symbol for freezing rain on their forecasts.

They show rain at 0c for Leeds and heavy snow at -1c for LBA so anyones guess. 

This chart shows the forecasting difficulties. 

http://www.wetterzentrale.de/maps/GFSOPUK06_9_2.png

Possible there will be columns of sub zero air but surely where there are + 850hpa temps snow is unlikely. 

I'm studying my snow radar app quite a lot, and noticing that the prognosis isn't looking good for here in terms of snow. Through in Glasgow, the snow which was falling there during this morning appears to have turned to rain according to that app (by that, I mean just normal rain and not the freezing rain which has been much discussed on this forum, and which this snow radar app is capable of picking out), although there is still some sleet to the north of the city centre in Glasgow according to my app.

What is even more noticeable is that the main area of precipitation is really struggling to make any sort of inroads in this direction at the moment which shows that the Scandy High which it is coming up against might be a bit more stubborn than what the latest forecasts have suggested. I am noticing as well, that this precipitation also seems to be more or less splitting into two separate areas with one area passing to the north of here, and the another area of precipitation to the SW of here.

This raises the possibility that in the end, we could actually end up getting nothing at all from that (or very little if anything), so that it then just stays completely dry here. As everyone know knows anything about the weather will know, anything which falls as snow still counts towards the overall rainfall totals and this has been a month where in this part of the world, we have been lagging quite a lot behind the rest of the UK when it comes to rainfall totals and so on that basis, it wouldn't surprise me if today did end up panning out in the manner in which I have just described which would then, just serve to increase that rainfall gap between here and the rest of the UK even further.

At 500 m on Holme Moss in the S. Pennines, rain at -3C

Moderate rain here. 

The surface parameters are more than cold enough to support snow, but it is too warm aloft. 

+2C/-2C

Well, I've seen what appears to be half-a-dozen snowflakes in the past couple of minutes... either that, or the birds passing over have dandruff! There's no sign of anything on the windows, bins or path outside, not even rain, despite light blues on the radar for the past 15 minutes.

The temperature's been falling, though (down from 2.7C 15 minutes ago to 2.3C now) and the dewpoint's rising (-1.1 to -0.5C now) - typical of a snow-to-rain type event, but there's just not enough of it to really notice!

(Edit: the 925hPa temperature is -1 or -2 at the moment, so if the clouds are shallow enough, as they seem to be, the parameter still support snow or sleet. The 925s go above zero at 3 PM according to the Euro4.)

Rain all the way here. 

Temp dropping -0.4c and an icy glaze developing.

Nasty cold rain here too. And even up at the Cat & Fiddle it appears to be raining. However I have a temp here of 0.0C. Looking out of my bedroom window at the telephone wire there is a curious sight. The droplets of water have definately frozen though I don't think this is a true freezing rain event as in supercooled rain, rather simply rain falling into freezing air.

Yuck, hope you don't have to go out in that! It caused chaos down here earlier this year, something like 7 accidents within 30 minutes on the M20.

Meanwhile here the initial "mini front" has moved away and with the second, much bigger band of rain any wintriness has gone. It's now 2.0C, dew -0.1C and blowing a near-gale.

Isn’t that by definition what freezing rain is though? Frozen precipitation that has melted as it passes through a warmer layer of air and then goes through colder air closer to the surface “supercooling” it and causing it to freeze on impact?

Hi Tom

The SE’ly rain shadow effect isn’t really kicking in today - any particular reason? A very active front? 

Yes heavy rain here now at 3c and the wind has really gotten up, horrible day

To be honest I'm not sure. I thought there was a difference between a true freezing rain event with supercooled droplets freezing instantly on contact with something and 'normal' rain coming into contact with a  sub zero surface and turning to ice. How do you tell the difference anyway?

Good question! From what I have read and indeed what I saw on the forecasts yesterday they were basically describing the supercooled rain scenario which is “genuine freezing rain” rather than cold rain on to frozen ground. I guess the end result is more or less the same but the former option is more unusual in the U.K.

We will be getting lots of the third option (melted non-freezing rain) later but I suspect the Grampians may get a bit of pasting in places.

Upon studying the rain radar maps, I can see that the main area of precipitation is now becoming a bit more organised just to my west with the two parts of it rejoining each other to a certain extent. However, this remains very fragmented just to my west and is still struggling to actually reach here.

Rather interestingly though, my snow radar map shows that falling just as rain to my immediate SW, but as sleet just on the other side of the Firth of Forth over in Fife.