Wintry mix?

It's snowing again today and apparently there's supposed to be a blizzard or "White Out!" (That's one I haven't heard before.) Weather.com stated, which I check as obsessively as my email, that today there would be a "wintry mix." What's a wintry mix? To me it sounds almost like a sweet party food covered in white chocolate. (can you tell I'm pregnant?)
Being a desert dweller most of my life, I have only known of a few basic adjectives used to describe precipitation. They are: snow, rain, hail, flash flood and humidity. In Las Vegas, that's all that ever happened.
But here in Minnesota it's a whole new world full of words used to describe what comes out the sky and Hans and I wonder and laugh at how there can be so many possibilities. For example: Flurry (no not the milk shake at Mc Donalds), iced rain (no not hail), sleet, blizzard, snow shower, lake-effect snow, snow pellets, soft hail, thundersnow, rimed snow, graupel, fog, and of course wintry mix.
Who knew?


Update: 3/11/09
Today I took the boys to school and the temperature was -4. Just getting into my van was an adventure.
#1 The doors were almost sealed shut because just 2 days ago it was 36, meaning it started melting all the snow, but that night it snowed and went below freezing causing all the water to, well, freeze.
#2 Because it was -4 and I hadn't started my van for a couple of days, it almost didn't start. I did tell the boys if the van didn't start we would all just go back to bed and sleep all day. Too bad for them and me.
#3 The windows were of course covered in frost and snow. As usual I started scraping them, but there was a third layer of icy film that made scraping almost impossible and it appeared that the inside of the window was also filmed over. I etched a 12 x 12 inch square on my side of the van and off we went. Luckily 10 minutes into the drive, the car warmed up and the defroster kicked in, leaving my view crystal clear.