NATCHEZ — Monday was shaping up to be just the start of another average work week for High Cotton owners Karry and Doug Hosford. Then there was a snowball fight.

“It was so cool,” Karry said. “I was working in the store when I saw Doug and the kids playing in the snow outside.”

Technically the frozen precipitation wasn’t snow — but sleet. Still, Doug and his two sons Jack and Walker were having fun throwing sleet balls on Main Street on the first day of December.

“I hit daddy in the glasses,” Jack Hosford said with excitement. “It was funny.”

The sleet came as a surprise for most Miss-Lou residents.

Angela Devrent was standing outside The Pampered Sole shoe store on Franklin Street talking with passersby about the freak sleet storm.

“When was the last time it sleeted (on the first day of December)?” she asked.

Unlike the Hosfords, Devrent said she was given some warning. She was on the phone with a friend in Vidalia who told her to watch out for the ice as it crossed the Mississippi River.

National Weather Service in Jackson meteorologist Joanne Culin said sleet and snow flurries can occur despite outside temperatures being above freezing.

“The atmosphere is cold enough and close enough to the surface where the rain doesn’t have time to melt into actual rain,” she said.

She said Jackson also experienced sleet and snow flurries Monday.

Adams County Emergency Management Director Stan Owens said the forecast for Natchez included a 20 percent chance of sleet or snow flurries.

“It kind of amazed me,” he said.

The forecast for today is warmer with a high near 57 degrees.

Temperatures will drop to a low of around 42 degrees.