Graupel

It's been an odd weekend, with bright, sunny spells interrupted by some quite heavy snow storms. This morning though, we got a heavy fall of graupel.

No, I'd never heard of it either, but what fell (the photo is of some that collected on top of a gutter brush) was different to hail; softer and smaller. 

Graupel is formed when supercooled droplets of water freeze on a snowflake as it falls. They are typically 2-5mm in size, anything bigger than that being classified as hail. 

I wouldn't have learned any of this if I hadn't been conscious of the need for a Blip today. Oh, and been chained to my desk trying to bash out the 1,000 words a day that should see my novel finished by early summer...