{"id":2148,"date":"2022-10-14T22:37:16","date_gmt":"2022-10-15T02:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/?p=2148"},"modified":"2022-10-14T22:37:16","modified_gmt":"2022-10-15T02:37:16","slug":"graupel-hail-no","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/?p=2148","title":{"rendered":"Graupel? Hail No!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Been a bit soggy and cool here in Beautiful West Michigan lately. Guess that’s to be expected in mid-October, right? However, I didn’t really expect the thunderstorm we had the other night. And I really <\/strong><\/em>didn’t expect miniature globs of ice to fall from the sky yesterday. There I was, minding my own business, on the couch enjoying some coffee, when suddenly a dark grey cloud zoomed in from the west. \u201cOh, here comes more rain,\u201d I thought aloud. Sure enough, it began to pour, but then I noticed the \u201craindrops\u201d looked oddly large and were bouncing off the deck. That’s because it was hail!! No damage mind you. Just little globs of ice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took a few pictures and posted them on the BookFace. Several people reacted, some saying \u201cOhhh I’m not ready for that!!\u201d I replied that one can’t really prepare for hail… it can come pretty much any time. Apparently they mistook the hail for snow, even though the top of my post stated that we \u201cJust got a load of crunchy raindrops!\u201d I’m beginning to learn that lots of people don’t read the text for posts at all, they just look at the pictures. So one of these days, I’m gonna post a picture of a bowl of ice cream and put some text above it like, \u201cMy wallet ran out of kidney beans last November.\u201d Just to see if anyone actually reads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, we really did<\/strong><\/em> get some snow sometime last night, as evidenced by a slight dusting on the deck and the tarp on the woodpile. More like snow globs… but snow nonetheless. At least that’s what I called it. Didn’t get cold enough last night for it to stay very long, but there it was, an unsettling reminder of what will soon be falling from the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Called a friend of mine who is taking a paid separation from work. Cost cutting you know. Called me yesterday but I couldn’t talk. He did say he’s actually OK with it, but I just wanted to check back with him to make sure he was doing alright. The topic soon shifted to the recent weather changes. When I described the blobs of snow he said, \u201cOh yeah, they call that graupel.\u201d \u201cHuh?? I thought it was just sleet…\u201d I replied quizzically. \u201cYeah, that’s the name of that kind of snow.\u201d \u201cOK,\u201d I continued, \u201cbut I think I’ll just call it snow globs.\u201d After we hung up, he texted me, \u201cLook up graupel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure enough, in the Merriam Dictionary (online) it’s defined as \u201cgranular snow pellets \u2014 called also soft hail.\u201d While on the Merriam Dictionary site, I clicked on the little speaker icon and learned that it’s pronounced GROU-pel.<\/strong><\/em> This intrigued me, because my high school German classes told me that the \u201cau\u201d combination is always pronounced \u201cow\u201d in German. Off I went to Google Translate, clicked in the box set for \u201cDetect Language,\u201d and typed in \u201cgraupel.\u201d Google said that Luxembourghish was detected. OK… interesting right? On the other side of the screen, the English translation said, \u201chail.\u201d But the snow globs from this morning didn’t look like hail. OK, now for some more fun. I set the language selector on the left to German, and then \u201cgraupel\u201d was translated into some obscure English word called \u201csleet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THAT’S WHAT I SAID, DARN IT!! Too funny. So Mr. or Ms. Meteorologist Person, please forgive my desire to remain old fashioned. I will continue to refer to graupel with my favorite single syllable name for snow globs: sleet. But I do like snow globs better, only because it’s sillier. I like silly. Therefore, Ms. or Mr. Meteorologist, if you don’t like my animosity toward graupel, try sending us some better forecasts if you please. I still have lots to do outside and I don’t like getting clunkified by graupels or sleets or any other ice globule face biting frozen rain projectiles. I mean really, who ever heard of graupel??<\/strong><\/em> Anyhow?? Although I can foresee a fun conversation where I will impart this newfound knowledge to my grandsons, and pronounce graupel<\/strong><\/em> with a very guttural rolling of the r.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, I hereby reserve the right to call them snow globs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s an old classic about the weather we’ll be getting soon. Keep your wood dry!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dPIXBKZv9OQ\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Been a bit soggy and cool here in Beautiful West Michigan lately. Guess that’s to be expected in mid-October, right? However, I didn’t really expect the thunderstorm we had the other night. And I really didn’t expect miniature globs of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-happy-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2150,"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148\/revisions\/2150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kakahead.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}