Ice pellets (also referred to as sleet by the United States National Weather Service) are a form of precipitation consisting of small, translucent balls of ice. Ice pellets are usually smaller than hailstones and are different from graupel, which is made of rime, or rain and snow mixed, which is soft. Ice pellets often bounce when they hit the ground, and generally do not freeze into a solid mass unless mixed with freezing rain. The METAR code for ice pellets is PL.

Ice pellets form when a layer of above-freezing air is located between 1,500 and 3,000 meters (4,921 and 9,843 ft) above the ground, with sub-freezing air both above and below it. This causes the partial or complete melting of any snowflakes falling through the warm layer. As they fall back into the sub-freezing layer closer to the surface, they re-freeze into ice pellets. However, if the sub-freezing layer beneath the warm layer is too small, the precipitation will not have time to re-freeze, and freezing rain will be the result at the surface. A temperature profile showing a warm layer above the ground is most likely to be found in advance of a warm front during the cold season , but can occasionally be found behind a passing cold front.