Fall and Winter are the Seasons when you are likely to hear odd Weather Terms

Autumn has arrived, and there is a chill in the air; winter is just around the corner. Weather and terms also change with the season, shifting away from thunderstorms and toward snowstorms.

Despite the frigid temperatures, these months aren’t just about fluffy, blowing snow; meteorologists use a slew of adjectives and terms to describe everything from ice formation to storm development.

Meteorologists know these terms and phrases like the back of their hands, but others may not even recognize them as real.

Frazil ice may have seemed like something else to you in the past. Water flowing over a supercooled surface forms ice crystals. Due to the flowing water, ice crystals can’t form one solid sheet. Instead, they form more ‘slush-like’ sheets with random ice crystal orientations.

Snow and ice become slush when heated above freezing—just to the point where it begins to melt, but not all the way. Frazil ice, on the other hand, is formed by water crystallizing into ice, whereas it is essentially the inverse of frazil ice in that it is a return of ice crystals to a liquid state.

Whenever temperatures drop, fragile ice can form inside pipes and mains, which can lead to expensive repairs. Floods can be caused by frazil ice accumulation in rivers that prevents water from flowing.

Read Also: Snow and Rain are to Fall in the Northwest this Week due to a Regional Atmospheric River

Think about this: a warm and wet winter suddenly freezes everything overnight as a result of an Arctic vortex. There is a loud boom at night, and your house starts shaking slightly. But you are not in a seismically active area. What caused this mysterious quake?

Frozen earthquakes are also called ice quakes or cryoseisms. Tectonic activity isn’t responsible for frostquakes, which is why they’re not earthquakes. Frost quakes occur when deep within saturated soil, water freezes suddenly.

During a frost, water expands, and the saturated ground cracks. As it stretches out, freezes, ruptures, and cracks more.

Snow pellets are also known as Graupels. Glaupel is formed when ice crystals high in a cloud crash into supercooled water, freezing into tiny balls that fall to the ground.

The term ‘soft hail’ may be used to describe graupel, but it is not hail. A hailstone must be at least 5mm in diameter to be considered hail. A storm cloud may also produce hail when strong updrafts lift water droplets to the freezing level, so they fall to the ground as hail.

Snowflake-sized Graupel is not formed by updrafts and is smaller than hail. Because they accumulate like tapioca pudding, these pellets are sometimes referred to as ‘tapioca snow’.

Read Also: What is the Snowiest Month in your Region of Canada?

Storms may be more common during the summer, but they may develop during the fall or winter as well.

Lightning brightens the sky and thunder rumbles, as this precipitation falls as snow in the winter. Storms and thundersnow occur when a mass of unstable, frigid air sits above an air mass comparatively warmer, such as the air over large bodies of water without ice.

Snow may develop inside the cloud or at the surface, but the contrast in upper and surface temperatures is great enough to fuel lightning development. Storms with the greatest instability are more likely to produce thundersnow.

During thundersnow, lightning appears brighter in the sky since light reflects off ice crystals and snow in the sky. Thundersnow will still be loud if you’re near the lightning, but the sound won’t carry far because snow acts as a sound insulator.

Although this term may sound exaggerated, the concept of a weather bomb is very real and should not be taken lightly.

In a low-pressure system, this term is used to describe a rapid drop in pressure at the center called bombogenesis. Weather bombs or bomb cyclones are systems with minimum pressures falling by 24 mb or more in less than 24 hours.

During the colder months, this occurs more often due to the contrasting clash between cold continental air and warm tropical air. Storms build into large, powerful Nor’easters as a result of clashing temperatures.

Storm intensity increases rapidly as pressure drops, making them a greater threat to those in their path. Rapid changes in precipitation and wind intensity can be dangerous.

Read Also: 1.7m UK Households are not Turning on Their Heating this Winter