Have you ever had that ice cream confection known as Dippin' Dots? Those little tiny balls of ice cream of various flavors?
That's how I would describe the type of snow known as graupel.
Graupel is a German word meaning "white barley." Barley is that plump round grain often used in soups.
In weather, graupel is soft, and small pellets form when supercooled water droplets freeze onto snow crystals, a process called riming.
Graupel is not hail or ice pellets. Those are solid pieces of ice. Instead, graupel resembles mini snowballs falling from the sky, often reaching sizes of a quarter inch in diameter.
It's formed in an unstable atmosphere with updrafts and downdrafts. That's why you often see graupel falling during heavy lake-effect snow squalls accompanied by thunder.
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