What is the difference in the formation of snow and ice(hail storm)? Difference between ice and snow?

Question

asking this question because snow is soft in texture and ice is hard

Answer 1

Hail is formed due to the rough air currents in a storm. When it is cold enough for water to freeze in a cloud, the water droplets become heavy and they start to drop. These now frozen water droplets are caught in the air currents and pushed back up into the cloud where it gathers more water on the surface which will also freeze and the cycle begins again. This cycle will continue until the frozen water droplet is too heavy for the air currents and it falls to the earth where it is then classified as hail.

Snow is different in that it is a single water droplet frozen into a tiny ice crystal that floats gently to the ground.

Answer 2

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What is the difference in the formation of snow and ice(hail storm)? Difference between ice and snow?
asking this question because snow is soft in texture and ice is hard

Answer 3

It all depends on the temperatures of the different layers of air. Snow forms when the temperature is cold enough that water droplets crystallize as soon as they form and the water stays frozen as it falls. Hail is formed when rain is blown by updrafts to higher, colder levels of the atmosphere where it freezes, then falls. Typically this process happens several times, especially in more powerful thunderstorms with stronger updrafts. Storms such as these produce hail with larger diameters.

Answer 4

Both answerers are correct in saying that hail is rain freezing as it goes up, while snow is a gathering of freezing droplets as it goes down. I will only add that, in order to freeze, water must dissipate heat and that is difficult since the tiny drops making the clouds have virtually no mass. It only happens if the droplet meets a corn of dust, or another larger droplet. In fact, if that doesn't happen, tiny water droplets can cool down up to minus 40 degrees centigrade before freezing. Under-cooled rain is a big danger for aviation, as freezing fog is.

Answer 5

How Is Snow Formed

Answer 6

How Is Hail Formed