Broken sprinkler and rare freezing temperatures turn Florida yard into winter wonderland.
A haywire sprinkler and rare freezing temperatures turned a small patch of Jacksonville, Florida into a winter wonderland over the weekend.
It was enough to make some do a double take.
"We were just driving and like 'Oh my God.' We did a u-turn," said Kayla Scott, who pulled over to take pictures for her Facebook page.
A broken irrigation valve turned a set of private property sprinklers into geysers.
The water shot into the street and high above tall trees, startling residents at nearby apartments over the weekend.
Icicles, hundreds, maybe even thousands of them, hanging from bushes, grass, even trees in the median - stretched more than a block.
"I've never seen anything like that in Florida. I've lived here all my life and never seen anything like that. Not in the middle of the day, at least," Scott said.
Missy Midlik lives nearby and was worried the soggy situation would turn dangerous if water froze overnight. "Driving home, it was kind of scary because I saw water shooting up in the air," she said. "That did concern me, I thought it was a sprinkler that was malfunctioning. Then I realized how much water was actually coming out of the sprinklers."
The sprinklers were turned off Monday morning, but not before running for at least 24 hours, spouting gallons of water all over the roadway and median.
The system belongs to Deerwood Park North.
Property manager Gerald Dake said an irrigation valve got stuck somehow and spewed reclaimed water from a nearby pond.
He said no one called the homeowner's association to report the problem.
"This should not have happened. Fortunately, it did not cause any problems," Dake said in a phone interview.
The city's Environmental Quality Division monitors watering schedules.
The website said commercial properties should only water on Tuesdays this time of year.
An employee also said instances like this one are rare, happening only a few times a year.