Photography, Weather
“Snow-Hail” in my Southern California Spring Garden
It’s called “graupel” and in the thirty-three years I’ve lived in Southern California, I’ve never seen this before
Hail is not unheard of in Southern California. And we’ve certainly had our share of atmospheric river storms this winter. Our once-parched hillsides are budding with green again and wild poppies and lupine have burst from the earth. Spring had appeared to have “sprung.”
So, when I stepped out into the garden yesterday and eyed the heavy black clouds moving in overhead, I thought we were about to get another burst of very-welcome rain. I had let the kitties out for their “lunch hour” in the garden. They are all part Maine Coon, and they love the rain.
But when the sky opened up and what looked like snow began to fall, I could not believe what I was seeing! We’ve had snow down as low as the 1500-foot level in the local mountains in the last few days — which is pretty much unheard of — but I live at 525 feet above sea level.
If you look at the bottom right of the above photo, you can see a blurry bit of a fuzzy streak, dashing towards the house. That’s Freyja. She did not know what to think of this phenomenon either!
At first, I thought it was hail. But it fell like snow — soft and a little billowy. And it didn’t make the clatter that hail does when it hits the ground.
It turns out that it wasn’t exactly snow. It was graupel, also sometimes called “soft hail” or “hominy snow.” It forms when supercooled water droplets in the air freeze on falling snowflakes, forming 2–5 mm (0.08–0.20 in) balls.
You can see that the pellets are a little bigger and not as symmetrical as hail. And they melted away pretty quickly.
It started and stopped within a couple of minutes and then started up again. I just had time to grab my phone and take a couple quick snaps while running around the yard doing a little awed “happy dance.”
Here is a little video that I posted on Instagram. My green, spring garden, nodding with daffodils and periwinkles and budding hyacinth looks like it is being inundated by a snow storm.
Before I knew it, it all turned back to rain and the graupel melted into the earth. The hovering black clouds swept past us, and the sky parted to blue, almost as if it had never happened.
I wandered out the other day, trying to get a good shot of the mountains with the snow, but the cloud level was pretty low and you can’t really see the full range. Here’s a peek though.
I’m venturing out again this afternoon to see if I can take a few more photos with the blue sky that looks like it will predominate for at least a few days.
We’ve had an unusually wet winter here, reminiscent of the winters when I first moved to California, thirty-three years ago. Right now the snowpack is about double the normal height. It bodes well for a very green spring!
Erika Burkhalter is a yogi, neurophilosopher, cat-mom, photographer, and lover of travel and nature, spreading her love and amazement for Mother Earth’s glories, one photo, poem or story at a time. (MS Neuropsychology, MA Yoga Studies).
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Photos and story ©Erika Burkhalter. All rights reserved.