[masraum]

Originally Posted by Bill Verburg

That's called 'Graupel'

Someone posted that earlier in this thread which was the first time that I'd seen or heard the term. Back in the late 70s and mid 80s we used the term "snow pellets".

It seems that the term graupel was originally used in meteorological circles and eventually found it's way out into the general public.

Interesting: "The word graupel is Germanic in origin; it is the diminutive of Graupe, meaning "pearl barley." According to etymologists, there does seem to be a grain of truth in the assumption that the word grew from the Slavic word krupa, which has the same meaning. Graupel was first seen in an 1889 weather report and has been whirling around in the meteorology field ever since to describe "pellets of snow" or "soft hail" (the latter phrase is an actual synonym of graupel)."