Rain and snow mixed to refer to ice pellets. This precipitation occurs when the temperature in the lowest part of the atmosphere is slightly above the freezing point of water The depth of low-level warm air (below the freezing level) needed to melt snow falling from above to rain varies from about and depends on the mass of the flakes and the lapse rate of the melting layer. Rain and snow typically mix when the melting layer depth falls between these values. Wintry showers is a somewhat informal meteorological term, used primarily in the United Kingdom, to refer to various mixtures of rain, graupel
Backscatter diameter of the target multiplied by its inherent reflective properties, provided the wavelength is larger than the particle diameter (Rayleigh scattering). Water is almost 4 times more reflective than ice but droplets are much smaller than snow flakes or hail stones. So the backscattering is dependent on a mix of these two factors. The strongest backscatter comes from hail and large graupel (solid ice) due to their sizes, but non-Rayleigh (Mie scattering) effects can confuse interpretation. Another strong return is from melting snow or wet sleet, as they combine size and water reflectivity. They often show up as much higher