difference between sleet, hail, and freezing rain?

Answer 1

The links are definitions from the American Meteorological Society.

Sleet (known as ice pellets) occurs when raindrops freeze and is defined by a pellet of ice less than 5 mm in diameter.
http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search?p=1&query=ice+pellets
Hail is formed similar to sleet, but is defined as greater than 5 mm in diameter. It achieves this size by being carried aloft repeatedly in a thunderstorm's updraft and a layer of ice is added with each trip.
http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search?p=1&query=hail
Freezing rain occurs when rain comes into contact with the surface and freezes. It is liquid until it hits the ground.
http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search?p=1&query=freezing+rain

Answer 2

Hail is from a thunderstorm. Sleet is rain drops that freeze into ice pellets before hitting the ground. Freezing rain is rain that freezes on surfaces that are below 32 degrees.

Answer 3

Freezing rain falls when the ground is below 32 degrees but the air above it is above 32 degrees, causing it to freeze on contact. Hail typically can be larger than an inch, and usually falls in summer months or during thunderstorms, where as sleet is usually very small balls of ice that falls in the winter months.

Answer 4

Hail is ice (snow that has been thawed and refrozen with more snow multiple times in a thundercloud) that's large and heavy enough to survive melting when falling through warm air near the ground.

Sleet is frozen rain that frozen before hitting the ground. Ground air temperatures may be above freezing.

Freezing rain is rain that freezes after hitting the ground because of below freezing surface temperatures.