graupel
Americannoun
noun
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A small, white ice particle that falls as precipitation and breaks apart easily when it lands on a surface.
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Also called snow pellet soft hail
Etymology
Origin of graupel
1885–90; < German; diminutive of Graupe hulled grain
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“And multiple showers will just follow to rain. We’ll only be concerned about maybe a few snowflakes and graupel, smaller than hail, during the nighttime overnight hours.”
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 2, 2024
The negatively charged graupel are heavier, so they fall toward the bottom of the cloud.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 23, 2023
Graupel is also called snow pellets or soft hail, as the graupel particles are particularly fragile and generally disintegrate when handled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 24, 2023
By Friday morning, Eric Boldt, the warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Los Angeles, could confirm it had been graupel, which he defined as “basically snowflakes wrapped in ice.”
From New York Times ● Feb. 24, 2023
In Sacramento, the state capital, the weather service said it had received reports of something that might be either hail or graupel — soft, wet snowflakes encased in supercooled water droplets.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 23, 2023
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
