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Pat J
Hmmm, so that’s what it’s called. We get a bit of that every year, here.
Louise
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?
bean
I’m not wealthy enough to afford to call anything “graupel”, so I’ll just stick to hail.
gail
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.
Louise
This is interesting – according to this Avalanche Encyclopedia glossary, graupel and corn snow are two different frozen precipitation.
Ain’t the intertubes grand?
Louise
http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/encyclopedia/index.htm
Ooops forgot the link.
Evan
This type of snow is actually an indicator that there is a thunderstorm in the air 
had there been any reports of lightning in the area?
cool!
gail
Interestingly, Graupel is German for “little grain” — similar to the English idea of “corn snow.”
gail
Here are some really big chunks of Graupel from the National Weather Service site.
Pangolin
Interesting. We called it ‘oobleck’ when it fell on us in Arizona one March. Funky squishy stuff!
Chris
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.
Dean Venture
bun
