HOw To DIPPIN DOTS SNOW IN TEXAS


I figured I better post this before it's in the 80's and 90's, ha.  Plus I thought those of you in the North and East might get a kick out of our 'snow'.  So the other morning, on one of our 'warned' days of freezing weather, most of Houston woke up to this.  Odd, little, white balls of Winter stuff.  Snow?  Sleet?  Hail?  Dippin Dots? (more on that later).  No, this is something called "GRAUPEL".  What?  I know, us too, we've never heard of that.

What the heck is graupel?
It's apparently a Winter precipitation phenomenon that occurs when supercooled droplets of water collect and freeze ON a snowflake.  Who knew?

Graupel closeup
Tiny little white balls of hardened snow.
It was actually kind of neat to see.

Graupel in Houston
As you can see above, when they started collect in one spot, it did look more like an odd type of snow...or maybe it looks like...

Dippin' Dots Ice Cream, image courtesy of www.dippindots.com
...Dippin' Dots!!  If only it would do this next time!  For those who haven't ever seen it, Dippin' Dots is a wonderfully fun ice cream that is often called the "ice cream of the future".  It's flash frozen in liquid nitrogen which creates these little balls of ice cream that just melt in your mouth.

Still it was the first time in all the years I've lived here that I've seen 'graupel'.  Don't get me wrong, we have had lots of ice and sleet and some teen temps already this Winter, but this stuff is a first for us.

Learn something new every day huh?


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