Because it is getting to be that time of year here in the Midwest ...

Snow and snow-like stuff is already falling in some places, so it is time to discuss so-called "popcorn snow" -- Graupel (also called soft hail or snow pellets) is precipitation that forms when supercooled droplets of water are collected and freeze on a falling snowflake, forming a 2–5 mm (0.079–0.197 in) ball of rime. The term graupel comes from the German language.

So basically, it is a flake of snow surrounded by ice?

The Weather Channel, ever-desperate to find something to say, calls it "popcorn snow" or "nature's dipping dots."

Whatev.

BTW, this leads me to think about the canard about Eskimo words for snow. So ... The claim that Eskimo languages have an unusually large number of words for snow is a widespread idea first voiced by Franz Boas and often used as a cliché when writing about how language may keep us more or less alert to the differences of the natural world. In fact, the Eskimo–Aleut languages have about the same number of distinct word roots referring to snow as English does, but the structure of these languages tends to allow more variety as to how those roots can be modified in forming a single word.

In other words, English speakers who are not aware of highly inflected languages like Latin, might think that Latin had five or six words for things for which English has one. In reality, they have one word most likely, but spell it differently depending on its use in a sentence -- as subject, direct object, indirect object, etc.