neverspent | February 3: Graupel (Reply)

(Content warning: I am still obsessed with snow. It happens to me every year, when I feel the winter slipping away and I see half the country buried and I have seen tragically little white stuff.)

Today was unusually cold, below freezing all day and almost single digits overnight. I thought it might be too cold to snow, but when I arrived at my apartment I noticed little white pellets all over the grass. They looked like the individual tiny round balls that compose styrofoam. When I picked one up to investigate, it melted pretty quickly. It was quite soft, a miniature damp snowball.

There is so much I don't know about snow! I later found that this type of precipitation is called -- get ready for an awesome name -- graupel. Snow pellets or "soft hail." It forms when an snowflake inside a cloud collects supercooled microdroplets. Just enough to create a snowball fit for a ladybug.

Microscopic view of graupel!