Comments on: It’s Raining “Graupel”

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:45:21 +0000

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.

By: Pangolin

Pangolin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:30:35 +0000

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

By: gail

gail — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:14:46 +0000

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

By: gail

gail — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:07:00 +0000

Interestingly, Graupel is German for “little grain” — similar to the English idea of “corn snow.”

By: Evan

Evan — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:23:43 +0000

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!

By: Louise

Louise — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:17:40 +0000

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

Ooops forgot the link.

By: Louise

Louise — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 21:17:17 +0000

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

Ain’t the intertubes grand?

By: bun

bun — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:14:03 +0000

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

By: Dean Venture

Dean Venture — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:06:29 +0000

mmmm… natural dip’n dots!

By: tinfoil

tinfoil — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:27:42 +0000

And here I called them ice pellets.

By: gail

gail — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:15:09 +0000

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.

By: bean

bean — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:15:29 +0000

I’m not wealthy enough to afford to call anything “graupel”, so I’ll just stick to hail.

By: Louise

Louise — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:38:47 +0000

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?

By: Pat J

Pat J — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:35:54 +0000

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