Mardi Gras has its own pace and rhythm. But with a severe weather threat looming, Mobile showed it’s possible to put a whole Fat Tuesday on fast-forward.

Word of adjustments came early from the Mobile Police Department: The day’s first parade, the Order of Athena, would roll at 10:30 a.m. as planned, but the ones behind it would be moved up. Instead of waiting for their nominal 12:30 p.m. start time, the Knights of Revelry would proceed as soon as Athena was finished, with the King Felix III parade and the Comic Cowboys right behind them.

It panned out: By 12:30, the first units in the Knights of Revelry parade were passing Bienville Square.

The theme for the day emerged: Organizations weren’t just rolling earlier, they were moving faster. The Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association’s Mammoth Parade launched at 1 p.m. rather than 2 p.m. By the time it completed its westward loop and made it to the heart of downtown, the day had gone from breezy to windy, and the gusts were adding considerably to the spectacle.

As MAMGA floats turned off Royal Street and onto St. Francis, between some of the city’s tallest buildings, the wind-tunnel effect was becoming dramatic. As floats turned the corner, it appeared that every loose scrap of paper on them was being sucked straight up as if by a gigantic car-wash vacuum.

Further along the block, Frisbee-style throws could be seen rising five or six stories into the air, or being wafted the length of a block, before coming down. Some riders were throwing beads into the wind just to watch them boomerang back toward surprised recipients.

The last parade of the day, the Order of Myths, was the most vulnerable to incoming storms that already had shut down parades in the New Orleans area, so it saw the biggest changes. Its start time was moved from 6 to 5 p.m., its marching bands canceled and its route shortened.

Again, it worked. The Order of Myths’ iconic float featuring Folly chasing Death around a broken column made its run amid truly memorable conditions.

As the day’s final parade hit the home stretch up Royal Street, wind-whipped confetti and streamers, not to mention debris from previous parades, soared three and four stories above street level. And veteran paradegoers know exactly what a shortened route means: It means the riders were absolutely bombarding the crowd as they moved up Royal, trying to unload throws before reaching their destination.

A few minutes earlier, the city’s massive parade cleanup crew had been staged facing north on Royal Street, waiting for the southbound parade to turn onto St. Francis. The minute the parade’s last unit did so, the cleanup caravan rolled after it. Barely 10 minutes after the cleanup crew cleared Royal, the head of the parade turned off Conti to the south, proceeding up Royal with the barricade-breakers, the leaf-blowers, the water truck and the sweepers behind it.

By this point, no one could miss the fact that a storm was coming. But even Folly himself had wrapped things up in time to get indoors before it hit.