We are Learning to Learn: Purplish-Pink Snow

I looked out of my window yesterday afternoon and saw what looked like pink snow. It snowed Tuesday night, and I woke up to sleet and freezing rain yesterday. We had been having freezing rain for several hours when I saw the pink snow.

The plants in the pictures are pokeweek or pokeberry weeds. They grow about 6 feet tall and produce purple berries in late summer. The birds like to eat the berries, and I frequently see cardinals and blue jays eating on or near the ground by the plants.

In the pictures below, you can see places where berries used to be as well as berries which still haven't been eaten.

I think what happened is the rain washed some of the berry juice off some of the berries (perhaps sub-zero and near-zero temperatures have caused some to split?) and onto the snow. Since the temperature was below freezing, the purplish-pink color was trapped by the freezing rain and did not run off.