About Ice Storms

                  An ice storm, do you mean an event of large amounts of freezing rain? The precipitation will fall from the clouds and either melt on the way down through a warm layer of air, or the whole region of precipitation above is warm. But when it gets to ground level, there is a layer of COLD air, cold enough to freeze, so that when the rain strikes the surface of powerlines, tree branches, et cetera, it freezes. This encases everything in ice, making things heavy and likely to break, causing power outages and home/car damage, or blocking roads.

The air that is in the freezing layer needs to be cold enough for things to freeze, naturally.

Freezing occurs when a substance's molecules slow to a state of reaching a solid, rigid structure. A melted plastic freezes into a solid once it cools. Water has a freezing temp of 32F or 0C.

You really shouldn't go out in an ice storm, lest ice accumulate on you, or you get hypothermia and die.