Sleet, hail and graupel - The scientific breakdown

DAYTON — You’ve heard the term “graupel” being thrown around the last couple of days. What is it exactly?

Are meteorologists making up new terms for sleet and hail? Well, no. These three types of frozen precipitation are all different.

While hail is normally associated with thunderstorms and sleet consist of melted snowflakes that refreeze into hard pieces of ice, graupel is just a little different.

For graupel, you need two things:

• Snowflakes
• Supercooled water

Supercooled water is liquid water that is below the freezing point of 32 degrees, but it has not been frozen into ice.

When snowflakes find themselves among traces of supercooled water, the water adheres to the ice of the snowflake, freezing instantly. What happens after that is called “riming,” which is like a cake of frost covering the snowflake.

What you see falling are little snow pellets which you can squish with your fingers. It’s almost like the consistency of Dippin Dots ice cream. While hail can cause damage, sleet is just little pieces of hard ice, while graupel are little snow pellets.

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