Rain and snow mixed and snow. Though no "official" criteria exist for the term, in the United Kingdom the term is not used when any significant accumulation of snow on the ground takes place. It is often used when the temperature of the ground surface is above , preventing accumulation from occurring even if the air temperature is marginally below ; but even then, the falling precipitation must generally be something other than exclusively snow. In the United States, wintry mix generally refers to a mixture of freezing rain, ice pellets, and snow. In contrast to the usage in the United Kingdom, in the
Hail Creek coal mine a result of severe monsoon rain force majeure was declared and not lifted at Hail Creek until May 2011. In February 2013, the operators of the mine were fined $2,200 for a breach of environmental guidelines when it released water from the mine. The relatively low penalty was criticised as a slap on the wrist. Hail Creek coal mine The Hail Creek Coal Mine is a coal mine located within the Bowen Basin at Hail Creek in Central Queensland, Australia. The mine has coal reserves amounting to 970 million tonnes of coking coal, one of the largest coal reserves in