Before any cold snap, we’re often asked if the Maltese Islands could get any snow. The answer to this question is a convincing “No”. This is because of two reasons: the air temperature is not cold enough and the sea’s moderating affect (being a warm 16°C) doesn’t permit any falling snow to reach the ground anywhere across the Maltese Islands. Occasionally, we still experience a very interesting phenomenon, however. This is the occurrence of graupel (a.k.a. soft hail or snow pellets), and is likely to occur at some point during an outbreak of Arctic air across the central Mediterranean. This is a form of precipitation which resembles crumbled polystyrene (jablo) that forms when supercooled droplets of water are collected and freeze on a falling snowflake, forming a 2-5 mm ball of rime. They fall gently like snow, so it’s easy to tell hail and graupel apart. They are most likely in the colder early morning hours, before the sun’s rays start heating the ground, and only occur in very brief and localized ‘showers’.