A common example of this that is visible to people is graupel.

Graupel is also fragile enough that it will typically fall apart when touched.

The term graupel is the German word for the described meteorological phenomenon.

Strictly speaking, graupel is not the same as hail or ice pellets.

Graupel is a form of precipitation, which is very similar to snow and hail.

Graupel was formerly referred to by meteorologists as soft hail.

Graupel is found mostly in regions of weak updrafts.

On December 30, 2010 and February 20, 2013, graupel fell, although it was widely believed to be snow.

Droplets freeze upon impact and can form graupel.

The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, graupel and hail.

Snowflakes encapsulated in rime form balls known as graupel.

As well as snow, graupel or hail falls.

The strongest backscatter comes from hail and large graupel (solid ice) due to their sizes.

In stratiform anvil regions, aggregation into graupel was a the main growth mechanism.

Convectional precipitation, typically thunderstorms, often forms rapidly and frequently drop graupel or hail.

Frozen forms of precipitation include snow, ice needles, ice pellets, hail, and graupel.

If the graupel formed is reintroduced into the cloud by wind, it may continue to grow larger and more dense, eventually forming hail.

Macroscopically, graupel resembles small beads of polystyrene.

Big hail didn't fall the way rain or snow or little graupel hail would fall.

The process is called riming when super-cooled cloud droplets attach to ice crystals in the formation of graupel.

Although the city itself did not receive the wintry mix, surrounding suburbs above 200 m received graupel (a form of snow/ice pellet-type precipitation).

There is also a correlation between the total lightning rate and the size of the thunderstorm, its updraft velocity, and amount of graupel over land.

When this process continues so that the shape of the original snow crystal is no longer identifiable, the resulting crystal is referred to as graupel.

However, a July 2008 fall of graupel, or soft hail, mistaken by many for snow, has raised the possibility that the 1836 event was not snow, either.

However, graupel is easily distinguishable from hail in both the shape and strength of the pellet and the circumstances in which it falls.