Saturday night we went to bed about 10:00 but we had not been outside for over three hours. About 10:15 I had to get up and I realized that it was very bright and light outside of our house so I opened the door to see if we had left a light on. Our yard was completely covered with snow, even the asphalt driveway. The pecan trees still have their leaves on so the branches almost touched the ground. I knew that it was so warm that it would melt quickly, but I never once thought of taking a picture of it -- for one thing I would have been afaid to go outside alone late at night. I woke my husband up and tried to get him to look. He would not even get up and look. We live within a mile of Goldsboro on the west side (off of Hwy 70). What kind of phenomena could send snow this early and with such warm temperature. I looked again at 11:20 and the snow on the asphalt had turned to slush but there was still some on the grass. It was not mentioned on the weather Sunday morning so it must not have been very wide spread. I have not talked to anyone else who saw the snow. I KNOW that I saw SNOW on the ground. PLEASE explain it to me.

MIKE MOSS SAYS: Linda, I took a second look at radar data, vertical temperature and humidity soundings from radiosonde balloons and hourly observations from both the Goldsboro-Wayne County Airport and Seymour Johnson AFB (both had temperatures and dew points in the 60s through that time period) for the evening of Oct 25, 2008 and I am pretty well stumped as to any natural weather phenomena that could have produced snow, sleet or accumulating hail in the location you described. On occasion, that kind of collection of slushy hail or graupel can occur with an intense shower or thunderstorm, but there didn't seem to be anything on radar or reported in surface observations that would indicate that. There may be something I'm just not thinking of, or something associated with human activities that could produce that sort of phenomena, but I am at a loss to explain it. If anyone else reading this is from the area and knows of something that might account for Linda's observation, let us know in the comments!

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