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Rain and snow mixed (called sleet in the United Kingdom and other British English speaking countries, but not in the United States where the term has a different meaning in meteorology) is a precipitation consisting of rain and partially melted snow; it is common where the temperature is slightly above the freezing point (0 °C, 32 °F). The METAR code for this precipitation is RASN.
This precipitation is soft (unlike ice pellets) and transparent, but it can contain some traces of ice crystals, due to partially fused snowflakes. It is usually a transition phase to pure rain or snow.
"Wintry showers" or "wintry mixes"
Wintry showers is a somewhat informal meteorological term, used primarily in the United Kingdom, to refer to various mixtures of rain, freezing rain and snow. Professional meteorologists tend to shy away from using the term under any circumstances, but radio and television weather reporters use it regularly, the same way wintry mix is used in the United States.
Though no "official" criteria exist for the term, it is not used when any accumulation of snow on the ground takes place. It is often used when the temperature of the ground surface is above 0 °C, preventing accumulation from occurring even if the air temperature is marginally below 0 °C; but even then the falling precipitation must generally be something other than consisting exclusively of snow.
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