For a short period Sunday evening it seemed like each neighbourhood in Vancouver was experiencing slightly different weather — including 'grauple.'
Environment Canada meteorologist Doug Lundquist says the spring storm was a quick one that did something unusual.
"The storms were moving from east to west, which is counter the typical, but that's not impossible," he says, noting the weather pattern formed in the Fraser Valley before moving down towards Vancouver.
Typically, Vancouver's weather comes from the Pacific Ocean.
"There was a little bit of everything, it depended on what neighbourhood you were in," he says.
The weather ranged from snow in some of the upper areas of the region, to hail, to lightning, to sunshine, to graupel.
"Graupel" is a term some people used on social media to describe what was falling. It's a meteorological term, Lundquist explains, but most people would just say "small hail."
"It's just small hail; graupel looks like snow pellets sometimes too, like if you destroyed styrofoam," he says. "It's pretty typical of spring."
It's one of several meteorological terms that have been around for a while but have seen more usage by people online in recent years, such as an "atmospheric river."
"They've been around forever," he says of the term. "We usually call it small hail or snow pellets."
Small hail and snow pellets are more common at higher elevations since the individual particles melt on the way down.
Hail forms as ice moves up and down in an air column, often for more than a minute, Lundquist says. The more that happens, the larger the hail gets. Snow forms and falls, without moving up and down.
"Spring storms don't tend to give us big hail," he says.
More could be on the way, he adds, with Tuesday being the day of atmospheric instability.
"We're not completely out of the woods until the weekend," he notes.
Thunderstorm, snow, rain? Hello spring in Vancouver. ⛈❄️💧 pic.twitter.com/B8zvcX99ID
— Alanna Kelly (@AlannaKellyNews) April 11, 2022
