A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1038 entries
graupel
oft, small pellets of ice formed when supercooled water droplets freeze onto falling snowflakes, creating opaque, crumbly balls. Not quite hail, not quite snow — a liminal precipitation that bounces when it lands.
Etymology
German, diminutive of graupe (hulled grain, pearl barley). The pellets resemble barley grains.
Notes
Sometimes called “soft hail” in English, but graupel is more precise and increasingly used by meteorologists.