Abstract
In order to measure the liquid water content of a melting snowflake, a new automatic instrument based on a filter paper technique has been developed and used for field observation of sleet. Analysis of the observational data indicated that the relationship between the liquid water content w and the mass of the snowflake m (mg) could be expressed as W=βm-a.α and β range from 0.27 to 0.95 (0.53 in an average) and 0.07 to 0.51 (0.25 in an average), respectively.
A simple model for the melting of snowflakes showed that α was a parameter depending on the fall velocity of the snowflake alone and parameter β depends on the quantity of heat transferred from ambient air to the snowflake and the density of the ice skeleton in the melting snowflake as well as the fall velocity.
