LITTLE ROCK — At least 20 people fled their homes Wednesday in Faulkner County as creeks overflowed from rain that has deluged much of the state since Monday evening.
In Morrilton and Midway, residents cleaned up damage caused by straight-line winds from Tuesday’s storm system that also prompted the National Weather Service to issue several flash-flood warnings.
“It looks like someone came into town and cut down a bunch of trees during the night,” said Morrilton Mayor Stewart Nelson, who assessed damage at the Conway County Fairgrounds and the North Hills subdivision in his city.
One person was injured in Morrilton when a tree fell on her home Tuesday, but she refused medical treatment.
A weather service team toured damage there Wednesday and estimated that winds of up to 80 mph caused the damage.
“It was very, very quick,” Nelson said of the storm. “In just a few minutes, it was in and then it was gone.”
Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery said straight-line winds damaged several mobile homes in a park in Midway on Tuesday evening.
Montgomery said two or three people were briefly trapped inside the homes, but there were no injuries.
The rain tapered off in much of the state Wednesday afternoon as a “dry slot,” or break in the moisture-filled system, passed through, said Julie Lesko, a weather service meteorologist in North Little Rock.
Earlier, the storm system that formed over New Mexico and inundated eastern Oklahoma with 6-7 inches of rain also drenched Arkansas, exceeding rainfall predictions that had been revised downward.
Mountain Home received 6.1 inches of rain from 7 a.m. Tuesday to 7 a.m. Wednesday, and North Little Rock reported 4.38 inches during the same period. Calico Rock in north-central Arkansas and Camden in the south-central each received 4.3 inches of rain during that time.
Farther south, storms soaked Louisiana. Fort Polk, La., reported 9.49 inches of rain from 7 a.m. Tuesday to 7 a.m. Wednesday, and Natchitoches, La., had 8.1 inches.
Back in Arkansas, Pulaski County officials closed numerous roads Wednesday because of high water.
Faulkner County Office of Emergency Management Director Sheila Maxwell said teams evacuated four homes in the Liberty community near Vilonia and one home in Greenbrier as creeks in low-lying areas began rising Wednesday morning.
“They were able to freely get out,” she said. “They weren’t trapped.
“We’ve got localized flooding throughout the county,” Maxwell added. “But it’s in places that normally flood. When the rain lets up, the flooding goes down. When the rain picks up, the flooding goes up.”
Arkansas Department of Emergency Management spokesman Tommy Jackson said that other than the minor injury in Morrilton, no one else was hurt during the storms and flooding.
Last year, Arkansas had 18 flood-related deaths — the most in the country — according to a survey by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Pennsylvania was second with 16 deaths last year.
Officials are monitoring area rivers as water began rising with stormwater runoff.
In Van Buren, the Arkansas River was to crest at 24.5 feet Wednesday afternoon. The flood stage there is 22 feet. White River in Augusta is expected to reach 31.5 feet Saturday afternoon. The flood stage for that Woodruff County town is 26 feet.
Rising water is also expected to flood thousands of acres of cropland.
In areas along the rivers and streams in Arkansas, farmers are worried about the rain damaging or ruining crops, the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture said in a news release Wednesday.
“The farmland along the river bottoms, a lot of it looks like lakes,” Joe Vestal, Lafayette County extension staff chairman for the Agriculture Division, said Wednesday morning.
Some crops have been “freshly planted,” Vestal said. “If the water stands on it, it might not come up. ... It’ll take a while to get it off the fields.”
Keith Perkins, a Lonoke County extension agent, pointed out that the rain came early in the planting season.
“At this point, there haven’t been a lot of acres planted,” Perkins said. “We are just now in the early planting window for rice, corn and soybeans in my area.”
He noted that the rain will likely push back the planting dates of farmers who had planned to sow in the next couple of weeks.
The weather system is moving out, however.
Lesko said there’s only a slight chance of rainfall this evening in central Arkansas.
“There may be light showers in the evening, but they could be hit and miss,” she said. “There definitely won’t be as much moisture in this second rain system.”
Information for this article was contributed by Paul Quinn of the
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/22/2012