Glaze

glaze

(Also called glaze ice, glazed frost, verglas.) A coating of ice, generally clear and smooth, formed on exposed objects by the freezing of a film of supercooled water deposited by rain, drizzle, fog, or possibly condensed from supercooled water vapor.

Glaze is denser, harder, and more transparent than either rime or hoarfrost. Its density may be as high as 0.8 or 0.9 g cm^-3. Factors that favor glaze formation are large drop size, rapid accretion, slight supercooling, and slow dissipation of heat of fusion. The opposite effects favor rime formation. The accretion of glaze on terrestrial objects constitutes an ice storm; as a type of aircraft icing it is called clear ice. Glaze, as well as rime, may form on ice particles in the atmosphere. Ordinary hail is composed entirely (or nearly so) of glaze; the alternating clear and opaque layers of some hailstones represent glaze and rime, deposited under varying conditions around the growing hailstone.
Compare rime, rime ice, hard rime, soft rime.

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1. (Sometimes incorrectly called coagulation.) In cloud physics, usually the growth of an ice hydrometeor by collision with supercooled cloud drops that freeze wholly or partially upon contact.