GREENSBORO, N.C. — Did you hear a little pitter-patter against your window on Tuesday night?
You might have gone outside and noticed that there was more than just some rain sprinkles falling across the Triad area. We checked with our WFMY News 2 Weather Team, and they told us what we saw was actually something called graupel.
"It's not something we see very often," says WFMY News 2 Chief Meteorologist Tim Buckley. "When water droplets freeze onto snowflakes you get this little snow pellet called graupel. It kind of looks like hail or sleet, but it's softer. Many compare it to Dippin Dots ice cream."
This burst of precipitation happened between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Tuesday. Many in the area simply saw rain showers and nothing more, but in areas where precipitation was a little bit heavier this graupel was able to make it to the surface.
Is it graupel, hail, or sleet?
There's a difference between all these types of precipitation.
- Hail forms in thunderstorms. It is not winter precipitation. Rising air keeps water droplets high up in a thunderstorm cloud where they can freeze. The ice balls grow in size until the become heavy enough to fall out of the cloud. The stronger the rising air, the bigger hail can grow.
- Sleet forms when rain drops fall toward the ground but encounter very cold air. The freezing air turns the raindrops into tiny ice balls. They make a loud noise when they ping your windows.
- Graupel forms when snowflakes fall toward the ground and encounter some super cooled water droplets. These droplets freeze onto the surface of the snowflakes, making some soft snow pellets that we call gruapel. They resemble Dippin Dots ice cream.
Accumulation wasn't common, but one viewer did send WFMY a photo of some light accumulation on his back deck in Reidsville. We haven't seen frozen precipitation yet this winter season, so this is a first for that area.
