Most of New Year’s Day, snow and graupel fell from the sky. Granddaughter and I were totally pleased to see it. If anything would stick, it would be the second snowfall of the winter season. The first was December 10th when the mountain received 2.75 gorgeous inches.

As graupel falls, it isn’t necessarily obvious that it is anything other than snow. If you’re able to look at it closely, it looks a bit like tiny fluffy snowballs rather than the enchanting crystals of snow.

Graupel has a fascinating way of happening. Sometimes if conditions are just right those enchanting snow crystals will run into supercooled water droplets. As the snow touches the supercooled water droplets, those droplets will freeze onto the snow crystal. Falling through the sky the snow crystals will continue to collect supercooled water until one cannot identify the crystal any longer and this combination becomes ball-like, and is known as graupel.

As afternoon turned into night, there was a mere dusting of snow. No snow on the lane. Snow in the gardens, such as the photo above, with what is left of the leaves of iris providing a place for things such as larvae of butterflies to hunker down for the winter while waiting for spring to arrive.

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