While much of the Northern Hemisphere is still shaking off summer heat, Alaska has already had a taste of winter. The National Weather Service recorded the trace of snowfall at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport on August 31 when graupel briefly fell across the city, tying the August snowfall record set in 1997.
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To be fair, less than 0.1 inches fell, nowhere near enough to produce measurable accumulation. But because Anchorage normally records no snow at all in August, the brief burst of graupel was enough to put the final day of August 2026 into the city’s climate record. And it came on a notably chilly day: August 31 was 5.1°F below normal, the largest daily temperature departure from average during the month. The temperature bottomed out at 40°F (4.4°C) on August 30, while the month’s high reached 74°F (23.3°C) on August 14.
Despite the chilly finish, August 2026 as a whole was remarkably ordinary from a temperature standpoint. The average temperature at Anchorage International Airport was 57.5°F (14.2°C), exactly in line with the 1991-2020 climate normal. Overall, the month ranked as the 27th warmest August in Anchorage’s period of record, while also ranking as the 48th coolest.
If you are wondering if graupel counts as snowfall, the short answer is yes. The long answer is a bit more intricate.
Graupel forms when supercooled water droplets freeze onto falling snowflakes, coating them in a layer of ice and creating small, soft pellets that can resemble tiny balls of snow. The original snow crystal remains at the center, which is why graupel is classified as a form of frozen precipitation associated with snowfall.
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Many people confuse graupel with hail, but hail forms very differently. Hail develops inside powerful thunderstorms, where strong updrafts repeatedly carry ice particles upward through areas of supercooled water. The droplets freeze onto the growing ice, allowing hailstones to build layer upon layer until they become too heavy for the updraft to support them.
In other words:graupel starts with a snowflake, while hail starts with an ice particle. This makes graupel much softer than hail. It can usually be crushed between your fingers, while hailstones are typically hard and can range from pea-sized pellets to much larger chunks of ice…