Soft, rounded pellets of ice that form when snow or cloud water freezes onto ice crystals in clouds, or the plural of graupel.
From German Graupel, possibly from Old High German graupan meaning 'to granulate' or 'to form grains.' The term was borrowed into English from German meteorological vocabulary.
Graupel is what meteorologists call the weird weather phenomenon between sleet and snow—it looks like tiny Styrofoam beads falling from the sky, and German speakers named it perfectly because it looks literally 'granulated.'
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