high level clouds that are mainly composed of ice crystals
Cirrus cloud Cirrus clouds are formed when water vapor undergoes deposition at high altitudes where the atmospheric pressure ranges from 600 mbar at 4,000 m (13,000 ft) above sea level to 200 mbar at 12,000 m (39,000 ft) above sea level.[13] These conditions commonly occur at the leading edge of a warm front.[14] Because humidity is low at such high altitudes, this genus-type tends to be very thin.[2] Cirrus clouds are composed of ice crystals that originate from the freezing of super cooled water droplets in regions where air temperature is lower than -20 °C or -30 °C.Cirrus usually occur in fair weather.They are formed when it is high enough to be cold and freeze the water drops into ice. They sometimes may be caused by turbulence and wind shear, or by upper-tropospheric convection. Sometimes they are like blown out ice-crystals spreading from the top of a dying cumulonimbus.
Freezing rain Freezing rain develops when falling snow encounters a layer of warm air aloft, typically around the 800 mbar (800 hPa) level, causing the snow to melt and become rain. As the rain continues to fall, it passes through a layer of subfreezing air just above the surface and cools to a temperature below freezing (0 °C or 32 °F). If this layer of subfreezing air is sufficiently deep, the raindrops may have time to freeze into ice pellets (sleet) before reaching the ground. However, if the subfreezing layer of air at the surface is very shallow, the rain drops falling through it will not have time to freeze and they will hit the ground as supercooled rain. When these supercooled drops make contact with the ground, power lines, tree branches, aircraft, or anything else below 0 °C (32 °F), a portion of the drops instantly freezes, forming a thin film of ice, hence freezing rain.[4][5] The specific physical process by which this occurs is called nucleation.