Carl Sandberg famously wrote that fog comes into Chicago on little cat feet. Deep Gras comes into Mobile more like a storm surge – one minute you realize it’s seeping up through the floorboards and the next you’re treading water, wondering where you’re going to wash up.

The term was coined a few years ago and caught on fast because everybody who celebrates – or endures- Carnival knew what it was. They just didn’t have a name for it yet. The king cakes and parades and balls and parties start weeks before Fat Tuesday, but something changes on the final Friday.

For many it’s the start of a five-day weekend.

Monday, aka Lundi Gras isn’t technically a holiday, but in Mobile it falls between the twin peaks of Joe Cain Day and Fat Tuesday, so it might as well be. From Friday onward, there’s no more rushing home from work and school and then rushing to the parade, then hustling back home as soon as it’s over. Tomorrow is Not a School Day.

The signs were everywhere downtown on Friday, hours and hours before the Crewe of Columbus parade rolled. Purple-green-and-gold attire, the more sparkly the better, was perfectly fine attire for entire families, who were out in droves by lunchtime. The colors weren’t exclusive to Deep Gras, but the numbers were: You’d never have guessed it was a weekday.

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Earlier in the day a U.S. Navy destroyer had docked, in keeping with tradition, and by midafternoon uniformed sailors were investigating the food and beverage establishments along Dauphin Street.

Other, more bizarre uniforms emerged shortly thereafter, as members of the Crewe of Columbus began hitting the streets.

Picture a man walking along a barricaded street, dressed in a pink satin shirt with blue satin vest, green satin belt and purple satin pants, carrying several large bags of stuffed animals. There are times, in Mobile, Alabama, where such a sight is as common and unremarkable as the sight of a man in tie and jacket carrying a briefcase is elsewhere. Deep Gras.

The routine is the same but different, this year. Floats still line up along the north and west side of the Mobile Civic Center, marching bands and other interstitial units still line up on Claiborne Street to the west and the two queues merge as the parade begins.

Usually the members of the parading organization would do some pregaming inside the Civic Center before sashaying out to board their floats as friends and family cheered them on. But the old Civic Center has been reduced to a small pile of rubble at this point, so everybody lined up around the fenced perimeter of a vast construction site.

This happened around 5 p.m. By then, buses from the Clarke County public school system had already been parked nearby, and the broad shoulders of Canal Street were filling up fast with cars. That will be popular tailgating terrain through Tuesday.

Deprived of the Civic Center, a horde of costumed Crewe of Columbus maskers had mustered outside the Holiday Inn a bit farther north on Claiborne. The Blow House Brass Band serenaded them from the blocked-off street before leading a shambolic procession to the floats shortly before 6 p.m.

By the time the parade rolled at 6:30, some onlookers had been waiting for as long as two hours, sitting in lawn chairs they’d transported to the scene in the type of wagon designed to haul small children. That sort of professionalism is typical of Deep Gras. So were the rakes and pole-mounted nets some used to catch throws.

Even with the floats lined up nose to tail before the parade, it was clear this would be a big one. And it was, with the large Crewe of Columbus followed by the smaller Krewe de Secondline. There was a moment where, if you were standing at the corner of Government and St. Emanuel Street, you could see the same parade in three directions. To the east, the tail was still moving northward on Royal Street, past Mardi Gras Park and the History Museum of Mobile. The middle was passing along St. Francis St., three blocks to the north. A block to the west, the lead units had already turned the corner from Conception Street onto Government.

These included the Clarke County High School Royal Band of Blue, whose members had been in Mobile for at least three hours at this point and who still had a couple of miles to cover on foot before beginning the 80-mile bus ride back to Grove Hill.

The parade rolled, entertaining a crowd estimated by the Mobile Police Department at 92,928 people. Afterward, along Dauphin Street, sailors roamed amid revelers in formal attire. Well after the Krewe’s floats were parked, cars were streaming into a Royal Street parking garage as members and guests arrived for yet another big happening, the Mobile Area Mardi Gras Association Grand Marshal’s Ball at the Convention Center.

The night was far from over, and Deep Gras was just getting started.

Sandberg said the fog sat on silent haunches. Deep Gras doesn’t sit still, and there’s nothing silent about the way it moves.