LITTLE ROCK — Utility companies continued working to restore power Saturday as forecasters warned of plummeting temperatures and a possibility of a white Christmas.
A storm system Thursday carried winds up to 80 mph to Arkansas and left thousands of utility customers statewide without power. As of about noon Saturday, 1,500 homes and businesses were still without electricity in Entergy’s statewide service area, spokesman Sally Graham said.
All Entergy customers were expected to have power late Saturday night barring any repair troubles, she said. The utility company brought in more than 500 contractors from other states to help with the power restoration, Graham said.
Southwestern Electric Power Co. had more than 5,600 without power after Thursday’s storm in its service areas but completed restoration efforts Friday, company officials said. Other utility companies, including Craighead Electric Cooperative Corp. and First Electric Cooperative, did not have any power failures Saturday, according to their websites.
But utility companies aren’t rejoicing yet.
National Weather Service meteorologists said a low pressure system coupled with a cold front could bring some Arkansans a white Christmas.
The system is moving east and should begin sweeping into the state late today into Monday, said Joe Sellers, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Tulsa.
The system will bring “favorable chances” of snow across the state and will drop temperatures into the teens Tuesday night in northwestern Arkansas and into the 20s in the majority of the state, forecasters said.
“It’s probably going to start off as rain in southern Arkansas,” said meteorologist Sean Clarke in North Little Rock. “As the system tracks across the southeast, the temperatures will get colder, and we’ll see some sleet, some freezing rain, some snow after dark on Christmas.”
Weather models haven’t locked in the system’s descriptors yet, Clarke said, so forecasters have varying models showing which areas will get snow or a wintry mix. As of 3 p.m. Saturday, the most favorable model showed northern Arkansas counties receiving up to 4 inches of snow Christmas night and central Arkansas residents seeing the rain-snow mix, he said.
Residents living in northeastern counties of the state will likely see rain on Christmas Eve and the beginning of Christmas, Memphis meteorologist Marlene Mickelson said. That will likely change to sleet and snow mixture on Christmas night, which should continue into the next day, she said.
Arkansas, Pages 17 on 12/23/2012