It's Raining "Graupel"

Posted by gail in Science & Tech on March 4, 2008 at 10:13 am


graupel1

graupel2

When I went out to walk the dog this morning, here’s what I found on my patio — Graupel :  "precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water condense on a snowflake, forming a 2–5 mm ball of rime ice; the snowflake acts as a nucleus of condensation in this process." Graupel looks like the remains of a crumbled styrofoam cup, it crunches under your shoes, and it sizzles when it comes down, like cold french fries going into a deep fat fryer.


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COMMENT

14 comments to "It's Raining "Graupel""

  1. Pat J
    March 4th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    Hmmm, so that's what it's called. We get a bit of that every year, here.

  2. Louise
    March 4th, 2008 at 10:38 am

    So it's not just tiny hail or sleet, as I in my ignorance have called it? Fascinating! Thank you!

    The "100 names for snow" of the Inuit is supposed to be a canard, but reading "Smilla's Sense of Snow" illuminated a few of the names they have for different types of ice. Do you know any more of the names for different types of precipitation, frozen or not?

  3. bean
    March 4th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    I'm not wealthy enough to afford to call anything "graupel", so I'll just stick to hail.

  4. gail
    March 4th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    The thing is, it doesn't look or feel like hail. Hail is like little chunks of ice. This is really like little bits of styrofoam and they crunch when you step on them.

  5. tinfoil
    March 4th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    And here I called them ice pellets.

  6. Dean Venture
    March 4th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    mmmm... natural dip'n dots!

  7. bun
    March 4th, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Huh, I always heard that referred to as "corn snow."

  8. Louise
    March 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

    This is interesting - according to this Avalanche Encyclopedia glossary, graupel and corn snow are two different frozen precipitation.

    Ain't the intertubes grand?

  9. Louise
    March 4th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

    http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/encyclopedia/index.htm

    Ooops forgot the link.

  10. Evan
    March 4th, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    This type of snow is actually an indicator that there is a thunderstorm in the air :D

    had there been any reports of lightning in the area?

    cool!

  11. gail
    March 4th, 2008 at 8:07 pm

    Interestingly, Graupel is German for "little grain" -- similar to the English idea of "corn snow."

  12. gail
    March 4th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

    Here are some really big chunks of Graupel from the National Weather Service site.

  13. Pangolin
    March 5th, 2008 at 8:30 am

    Interesting. We called it 'oobleck' when it fell on us in Arizona one March. Funky squishy stuff!

  14. Chris
    March 5th, 2008 at 11:45 am

    We got about 8" of this stuff in St. Louis back in the early 90's then it froze over on top. You could almost skate on it, then crack it open to find these little beads beneath it. Very strange.


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