the.com/graupel
snowflakes that fell into supercooled fog and came back wearing frozen armor
means Graupel is soft, opaque pellets of ice that form when supercooled water droplets freeze onto a falling snowflake, coating it in a crunchy rime — not quite snow, not quite hail.
from Straight from German Graupel, a diminutive of Graupe meaning 'pearl barley' or 'groats' — those little hulled grains. German speakers looked at these tiny pale crumbs of ice falling from the sky and saw a scatter of barley, and the meteorologists borrowed the word whole, grains and all.
- also called
- snow pellets or soft hail
- the squish
- crushes underfoot, unlike true hail
- how it forms
- flakes collect freezing water droplets called rime
- size limit
- stays under 5 millimeters across
- avalanche risk
- its ball-bearing layer makes slopes slide
denver graupel storm — june 2016 hailstorm that dumped graupel across denver, colorado, blocking roads and disrupting visibility
lake michigan graupel events — frequent lake-effect graupel storms off lake michigan during winter months, particularly around michigan and wisconsin shores