sleet

Wintry Mix

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_C1_7143These two scenes are from the same weekend. Saturday’s Mardi Gras parade partied its way under sunny skies and a high of 66 degrees. Temperatures dropped and snow and sleet fell last night, and at this moment, we’re sitting at 19 degrees with a layer of sleet covered by snow. A little more could be on the way today and tomorrow. It’s a winter as chaotic as last year’s, though with a bit less snow.

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_C1_7151Mardi Gras took me completely by surprise this year — Tuesday seems so early — so I caught only the tail-end of the parade this time around. The rest of these are from a couple of Fayetteville trails.

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_C1_7308Stay safe and warm out there, y’all.

Sleet.

Yesterday’s warmth abruptly ended last night with the arrival of freezing rain and countless billions of these:

_C1_1156Sleet. Two inches of it. Up in Nebraska, sleet’s a kind of curiosity, hail that fell short of its potential. Here it is altogether different.

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_C1_1162And it’s not just that there was so much sleet that it fell like rain. There was thunder. Every month in Arkansas seems to bring weather I’ve never seen.

It’s difficult to capture billions of tiny, colorless spheres, but these are my attempts before I just wanted to go back inside.

The cold comes after enough warmth to make the trees look like this:

_C1_1166Spring’s less than three weeks away!

Thanks for looking,

Dan