Some beautiful examples of graupel pooling under steep cliff areas at Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah. If you’re not familiar, graupel is formed when supercooled water droplets in the air are collected and freeze on falling snowflakes. The resulting precipitation ends up resembling Dipping Dots but don’t get your hopes up because they’re not quite as tasty. Great to see some mountain professionals having a bit of fun on the job.
Graupel are soft, small pellets formed when supercooled water droplets (at a temperature below 32°F) freeze onto a snow crystal, a process called riming. If the riming is particularly intense, the rimed snow crystal can grow to an appreciable size, but remain less than 0.2 inches. Graupel is also called snow pellets or soft hail, as the graupel particles are particularly fragile and generally disintegrate when handled.
images from LiWei WikiCommons