Vocabulary Day

We're gonna learn some new vocabulary today.  Are you ready?  We learned in the paper yesterday that the cool, frozen fog that painted the trees with delicate white frost is actually called hoarfrost (suppress your juvenile jokes children).  You can see the definition for hoarfrost here.

Our other vocabulary word is an odd weather condition called graupel.  Graupel exists in the strange nether world between hail and snow, it's soft hail, not quite fully formed snow.  Since it's neither hail or snow, it gets it own special word.  You can see the definition for graupel here. 

The odd thing about the word graupel is that I've never heard it before in my life, but today I read it twice, within an hour of one another, from two totally different sources - The San Diego Union Tribune and the Grand Forks Herald.  It turns out that the weather conditions in both San Diego and Grand Forks actually have the possibility for this odd weather phenomenon.  Weird.   

Now that you've learned something, here's your reward.  More cool pictures from the hoarfrost the other day.  Admittedly these are a day late, but I have an excuse, I've been fixing the snowblower in preparation for this weekends big storm, another foot or so of snow is on the way, and I gotta be ready. 

Here's a picture of the Riverside Park near our house.  

Another picture from the park. 

My intrepid photojournalist sidekick in her lovely brown cardigan.  I don't claim to be a mind reader (in fact I frequently make statements to the contrary) but I think that look is the "Uhhhh when can we go running again?" look.  Soon enough, soon enough.