INDIANAPOLIS — Please use extreme caution if traveling this evening or walking through your neighborhood. Rain and sleet are falling in central Indiana and unfortunately roads remain below freezing, which is creating icy travel where these showers are occurring.
There has already been numerous accidents reported in Illinois and roads are slick in western Indiana. I expect to road conditions to continue to deteriorate in the Indy metro area the next couple of hours despite technically not being under the recently issued Winter Weather Advisory.
I'd limit traveling until after 9 p.m. to allow road temperatures to get above freezing and make them wet and not icy...and it's a fine line when that occurs.
This is all due to a strong surge of warmer air a few thousand feet above the surface called the "melting layer." It's melting snow aloft before it reaches the ground.
Sometimes it re-freezes into sleet pellets before reaching the ground, but sometimes it remains melted and falls as rain, but hits sub-freezing surfaces like sidewalks, roads, and/or your windshield.
By midnight it should be mostly a cold rain and a soggy set-up heading into Sunday morning.