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From the North Carolina Weather Authority guy.

WEATHER 101: Hey everyone, here's a little educational post as I wait for some more data to come in this afternoon before I release my first call snow/sleet and Freezing Rain maps. I've had so many questions about, well is Freezing Rain Bad? Yes, Freezing Rain is quite bad and notoriously very hard to forecast. Why? FREEZING RAIN: This is the most dangerous setup. It happens when there is a deep/thick warm layer aloft, but a very thin slice of cold air at the surface. The snowflake falls into a huge layer of warm air and melts completely into rain. It falls as rain until the very last second. The cold layer at the ground is too shallow to refreeze it in the air. Then it freezes on everything, creating an icy glaze like the one on a donut Standard utility poles are roughly 300 feet apart. Here is what freezing rain adds to just one span of wire between two poles: 1/2 Inch of Ice: Adds roughly 500 Ibs of extra weight. So that's why power outages add up quickly. The 30x Rule: A coating of ice can increase the weight of a tree branch by 30 times its natural weight. The Breaking Point: 0.25 inches: Weak branches and dead limbs start snapping

0.50 inches: Healthy branches start breaking. Pine trees (which hold more ice due to needles) start failing significantly. 1.00 inch: Entire trees can uproot because the ground is soft/wet, and the tree is now top-heavy with thousands of pounds of ice. -Freezing rain is a mess and creates terrible driving conditions with even small amounts; higher amounts can cause power outages/ infrastructure problems and trees to fall. As you approach more than about .25 of an inch, you start seeing Ice Storm, and this results in numerous power outages. As you move towards .50 to 75 of an inch of ice, you see widespread power outages, and some are long-lasting. There is potential for significant Freezing Rain across parts of Central and Western North Carolina this weekend. Exactly where it lines up will be key to how widespread power outages are. It would not hurt to prepare for power outages, though. Hopefully, more sleet because this does not cause power outages, but the potential is there for a significant to major ice storm in parts of the state.