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When I was driving home for thanksgiving I couldn't help but curse mother nature under my breath. You see, we have a love hate relationship. I love her when she is nice and makes the weather lovely and easy to work with and she loves me when I leave her alone and don't try to tamper or predict what she is going to do next. I hate her when she causes snow storms the one and only weekend I am planning on going home and she often hates me for trying to predict when/what she is up to.
Back to my drive home. I was about 30 minutes from home and realized I was either going to be just on time for my doctors appointment. Then it started to snow. "Crap," I thought to myself, "guess I'm going to be late." It wasn't by any means a pleasant snow it was more of a "downpour rain" type of snow. (snowing so hard that if it were raining it would have been a downpour.) It sounded like there was ice being pelted at the windshield and it made it very hard to see and drive. I was trying to think to myself as to what type of snow this could be. As I was waiting for a stoplight to turn to a "green arrow" I saw the snow starting to collect on the windshield and noticed it was shaped in a ball not pretty snowflakes. Snow pellets!! They are more fun because people tend to think it is snowing dip 'n' dots all over the place. Or at least that is what they look like to me.
As I was sitting at the doctor waiting to get my blood drawn, two people were talking about how weird the snow was. How they had never seen anything like it and how they thought it looked like the little pieces of salt you throw on the sidewalk to make the ice melt. I was trying so hard not to butt in and tell them what they really were so I decided I should talk about it on my blog!
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| http://www.clevercrow.com/snowflakes.jpg Obtained via google images. |
Educational Moment!!
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Snowflakes: How they form and a special different type.
Snowflakes are little ice crystals that fall through the earths atmosphere. They are often know for their unique shapes and sizes.
Graupel is a type of snow. It is a bunch of ice crystals and snowflakes that have come together to form a ball as it falls through the atmosphere and thaws and freezes. As these balls are falling they are known as graupel, but once they reach the ground they are some times called ice or snow pellets. This my friends is what was falling last week on my drive home!
How Snow/Graupel forms:
Tiny little water droplets start to form around a piece of dust in the atmosphere. I'm talking really small... almost invisible to the naked eye. When the droplets are supercooled (really really cold, below freezing) they start to form into different shaped ice crystals. It can grow and get bigger as long as the environment is supersaturated (saturated, full of water, over 100%). If the environment is perfect you can see the little tiny ice crystal form pretty structures like the ones in the above photo.
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| by nordique on Flickr. Obtained via Google images |
As the ice crystals fall, if there are supercooled water droplets around they can fuse with the ice crystals. If this happens a lot as the ice crystal falls it soon becomes unrecognizable and can turn in the a soft little ball. It can also collide and collect other little ice crystals on its way done. This is the formation of graupel.
Some refer to graupel as soft hail, due to its shape. However, it is softer and is some what squishy if you try to gently press on it. It also forms differently than hail!
There are so many more fun facts I would like to share with you all about snow, but this post is getting long. I'm sure I will have more snow posts through out the winter! Enjoy!
PS- Let me know if you guys aren't able to read the post because of the color. I can change it for next time!
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