SUMMARYOne aspect of hailstone growth that has received attention over the last twenty years is the importance of low-density riming growth in hail. Density is an important parameter in riming growth because it regulates hail size and is also involved in other atmospheric processes, like crystal multiplication, charge transfer, etc. New numerical dynamic and cinematic models take into account the variability of density with growth parameters (such as size of cloud droplets, impact velocity and surface temperature) in order to attain more realistic results. These kinds of models need to have a function that describes the real low-density riming process.Analysing previous results, it is clear that several different empirical parametrizations are employed to describe density. These parametrizations relate density to growth parameters through the variable X = V o b/T s , where V o is the impact velocity of droplets into the target, b is the droplet size, and T s the hail surface temperature.These empirical expressions give different density values for identical growth conditions. It is important to note that these parametrizations stem from experimental data obtained in very different growth conditions and with different collector geometries.Working with experimental density data, we can show that different parametrizations are equivalent if X is defined in an appropriate way (taking into account correct impact velocity and collector geometry). Different environmental conditions are taken into account by means of Stokes' parameter.Due to this finding, we have aimed at developing a parametrization to be used in cloud models, which satisfactorily represents all experimental results.