What's the name of those ice-like things in the sky and below?

The big one is called hail and the small one is called graupel. It is a weather phenomenon, which is most common in summer or at the turn of spring and summer. It is some ice particles as small as mung beans and soybeans and as big as chestnuts and eggs. The water on the local surface is evaporated by the sun and then rises into the air. A lot of water vapor gathers and condenses into clouds. At this time, the relative humidity is 100%.

It liquefies when it meets cold air, and the dust in the air condenses to form raindrops or ice crystals, which are getting bigger and bigger. When the temperature dropped to a certain extent, the water vapor in the air was supersaturated, so it rained. If you encounter cold air without condensation nuclei and water vapor condenses into ice or snow, it is snowing. If the temperature drops sharply, it will form a bigger ice mass, which is hail.

Formation conditions of hail

In the hail cloud, the strong updraft carries many large and small water droplets and ice crystals, some of which fuse with ice crystals and freeze into larger ice particles. These particles and supercooled water droplets are transported by the updraft to the water content accumulation area, which can become the hail core. The initial growth core of these hailstones has good growth conditions in the water content accumulation area.

After the hail enters the growth area with the updraft, it collides with supercooled water droplets in the area with large water volume and low temperature, and grows into a transparent ice layer, and then enters the low temperature area with small water volume, where it is mainly composed of ice crystals, snowflakes and a small amount of supercooled water droplets, and the hail adheres to them and freezes to form an opaque ice layer.

At this time, the hail has grown up and the updraft there is weak. When it can't support the growing hail, the hail will fall in the updraft and continue to grow through the fusion of ice crystals, snowflakes and water droplets in autumn. When it falls to a higher temperature area, the supercooled water droplets that hit it will form a transparent ice layer.

At this time, if it falls into another stronger updraft area, the hail will rise again and repeat the above growth process. In this way, hail grows in transparent layer and opaque layer; Due to the differences in growth time and water content, the thickness and other characteristics of each layer are also different. When the updraft can't support the hail, it falls from the clouds and becomes the hail you see.