• Question: why is snow fluffy and soft but hailstones aren't ?

    Asked by anon-207531 to Silvia, Scott, Oliver, Natalie, Michelle, Lowri on 13 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Natalie Lamb

      Natalie Lamb answered on 13 Mar 2019:

      Snow gets light and fluffy when all layers of the atmosphere are below freezing from when it forms to when it reaches the ground. This means the snowflakes don’t melt and are formed from lots of tiny ice crystals that have space for air to get trapped inside. The air makes it fluffy- the same as an Aero! But snow can also be heavy. Heavy snow starts off as fluffy snow which gets warmer on its way to the ground and partially melts.
      Now hail is different to snow because it is not made of ice crystals but is actually a frozen raindrop, which is generally a lot bigger than a pure ice crystal.

    • Photo: Scott Graham

      Scott Graham answered on 15 Mar 2019:

      snow is softer as there is more air space between the ice crystals that form snow where as hailstones are made up of larger frozen water droplets. although is you make a snowball and compress it hard enough it will turn into a sort of iceball rather than soft snowball as all the air has been pressed out

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