BELLINGHAM, WA – (MyBellinghamNow.com) Thursday morning saw a pelting of what looked like pea-sized snowballs throughout Bellingham.

Some of you may be wondering what these tiny snowballs are called.

Not hail, nor sleet or snow, this form of precipitation is called graupel.

According to HowStuffWorks.com, graupel forms when falling snowflakes pass through a layer of supercooled rain droplets in the atmosphere.

The droplets instantly freeze to the flakes if the temperature is at or below freezing, creating small, crushable balls that look like hail.

Despite being synonymous with “soft hail,” graupel does not hurt when it drops on your head.

An “arctic blast” is predicted to hit Friday, bringing extremely low temperatures and potential snow in the lowlands.