What is graupel?

Regarding what is graupel, the following are relevant:

Graupel, also known as snowball or soft hail, is a kind of white opaque conical or spherical granular solid precipitation, with a diameter of about 2-5mm, which is often obvious when falling, and tends to rebound when touching hard ground, brittle and fragile.

In summer, in mountainous areas, there are often many supercooled water droplets frozen around the crystal nucleus, forming a white, dull round particle. Meteorology calls this kind of thing graupel, and in many places, it is popularly called Mi Xue or Snow Graupel. Generally, the diameter of graupel is between 0.3 and 2.5 mm, which is brittle and easy to break. Polonium does not belong to the category of snow, but it is also a kind of atmospheric solid precipitation.

How's the weather?

Graupel is a meteorological phenomenon, which refers to the process that raindrops or snowflakes condense into small ice balls in the air and then land. The appearance of graupel is generally in the case of low temperature, such as winter, which will make the air cool and the ground more slippery. Polonium is usually associated with physical changes of clouds, such as cooling and condensation caused by updraft. In some cases, graupel may have a negative impact on humans, animals and plants, especially in agriculture and transportation.

The difference between graupel and hail

Difference 1: season and accompanying weather phenomena, when encountering graupel, many people think it is hail. Graupel usually appears before or when it snows in winter and spring, while hail often appears in summer and autumn, accompanied by strong convective activities. When it hails, it will be accompanied by lightning.

It usually snows when it rains. The most common phenomenon is that it rains before it snows, which seems to be a sign of snow. In addition, graupel is less likely to appear, and hail is more likely to appear.

Difference 2: size, the biggest difference between graupel and hail is size. The graupel is generally the size of a grain of rice, with a diameter of about 0.3 to 2.5 mm, and the hail is big. The hail is the size of an egg, and some hail is even bigger, so the hail is disastrous and destructive. The graupel is basically not destructive, so it is not a disastrous weather. Hitting it won't hurt anyone, because it's small.

The sound of hail hitting the roof is fragile, but it won't cause any danger. It's different when it hails. Some hail is so heavy that it is easy to get hurt when it hits people. Hail has killed people and damaged buildings and crops at home and abroad.

Difference 3: Different transparency, hail is a short-term strong convection phenomenon, while graupel is a stable "solid precipitation". Visually, hail is translucent, while graupel is generally opaque.