There are many environmental factors that determine what type of icing accretes on your airframe. [Courtesy: NASA Glenn Research Center]
Key Takeaways:
Mixed icing is a transitional type that combines characteristics of both rime (rough, opaque, rapid freezing) and clear (glossy, translucent, slow freezing) ice, or results from encountering multiple varying icing environments.
Rime icing is the most common type encountered, typically forming in colder temperatures with small water drops, while clear and mixed icing are less frequent, occurring over narrower environmental ranges.
Effective pilot weather reports (PIREPs) for icing require specifying the icing type, the precise altitude range where it occurred, and the outside air temperature.
Answer: To answer that question, let’s look at the three icing types that pilots are asked to report. These include rime, clear, and mixed. What icing type accretes on your airframe depends on many environmental factors. Let’s briefly discuss each of these factors as it relates to the type of icing.
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Scott resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, and flies regularly throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast U.S. He is a CFI and former NWS meteorologist. Scott is the author of "The Skew-T log (p) and Me: A Primer for Pilots" and the founder of EZWxBrief.
