State digs out; cold to linger

Utility, road crews keep up the pace

Central Arkansas Transit Authority officials (top) work on getting a city bus unstuck from the ice at East Fourth and Cumberland streets in Little Rock on Saturday. The interstates and some main roads were fairly clear in Little Rock and North Little Rock, but many side roads still were iced over.
Central Arkansas Transit Authority officials (top) work on getting a city bus unstuck from the ice at East Fourth and Cumberland streets in Little Rock on Saturday. The interstates and some main roads were fairly clear in Little Rock and North Little Rock, but many side roads still were iced over.

After a storm that dropped freezing rain throughout Arkansas and as much as a foot of snow in some places, Arkansans can expect clearer roads and power to be restored within the next few days, officials said Saturday.


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Precipitation forecast for early today wasn’t expected to accumulate more than a tenth of an inch, or cause as many problems as the storm that crossed the state Thursday and Friday.

Much of the United States was shivering this weekend. Temperatures plummeted in the Midwest, and icy precipitation was reported from Texas through Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and up to Ohio, The Associated Press reported.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe declared a statewide emergency Thursday afternoon ahead of the storm that resulted in at least two deaths in the state. Boyd Wallace Roundy, 62, died Thursday evening when an ice-covered tree limb fell on his camper-trailer in Pope County. Paul Yerby, 75, of Violet Hill died Thursday after his truck ran off a road in Izard County as freezing rain was falling.

Meteorologist Peter Snyder with the National Weather Service in Tulsa said today’s precipitation is likely to be freezing rain, but he didn’t expect it to cause significant icing on power lines.

He estimated that 40,000 people in Northwest Arkansas lost electricity in Thursday and Friday’s storm.

“I don’t think we’ll see that number climb,” he said. He added that almost half of those people had their power restored by noon Saturday.

More than 60,000 homes and businesses statewide were without power at the power-loss peak, according to the Arkansas Public Service Commission.

Entergy Corp. spokesman Sally Graham said that at 11:15 a.m. Friday, 13,136 customers were without electrical service. Early Saturday, Entergy had about 7,000 customers still without power, though the number dipped below 4,000 just after noon, she said. Power was to be restored to most homes and businesses by Saturday night, she said.

In anticipation of widespread power failures, the company had called in additional crews from out of state. It began releasing those crews Friday, though Graham said it will keep 1,000 linemen on hand through today “in case something happens to the forecast.”

“Initially, we were looking at that second front,” she said of today’s expected precipitation. “We’re expecting a trace to one-sixteenth of an inch in the southern part of the state.”

She said Entergy officials are not expecting widespread power failures today.

photo

NWA Media

Traffic moves slowly Saturday afternoon in the icy southbound lanes of Interstate 540 south of Greenland.

Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. spokesman Rob Roedel said Saturday afternoon that he expected the company’s 19,000 homes or businesses that were without power to have service restored within 48 hours. He said the company had 35,000 power failures at its peak and that the bulk of those were in Ozark and Mena.

Greg Davis, spokesman for the Arkansas Valley Electric Cooperative office in Ozark, said crews Saturday were making slow but steady progress in restoring power to customers. He said the number without power in its western Arkansas service area shrunk to 12,000 Saturday from 20,000 Friday.

He said most customers would have power restored by the end of the weekend. But, he said, the company serves a largely rural, forested area - like that in southern Sebastian County and most of Scott County - and those customers far from cities could be without power for several more days.

“We’re throwing as much manpower at it as possible,” Davis said.

Southwestern Electric Power Co. said in a news release Saturday that its crews were making progress in repairing its main distribution lines. The release stated that the company anticipated having power restored to 95 percent of customers in Sebastian, Logan and Polk counties Saturday or today.

The company reported 5,200 customers without power at 10 a.m. Saturday, according to its website. That figure included 3,674 customers in the areas of Greenwood in Sebastian County, Booneville in Logan County and Waldron in Scott County, and 1,485 in the Mena, Cove and Hatfield areas of Polk County.

Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. reported Saturday that 1,375 customers in Fort Smith were without power, along with 1,295 in Lavaca, 601 in Clarksville and 534 in Charleston.

Sebastian County Office of Emergency Management deputy coordinator Aquib Kenoly said 80 percent of customers in Greenwood and outlying areas were without power Friday. That had decreased to 40 percent Saturday.

COLD TO LINGER

Low temperatures caused the precipitation Thursday and Friday to freeze, creating “super cool” droplets of freezing rain, sleet and snow throughout the state, Snyder said.

Temperatures are expected to gradually rise this week.

Lows Friday night into Saturday dipped to zero degrees in Gilbert and were in the single digits, teens and 20s throughout much of the state. They were expected to be slightly warmer Saturday night and into today, meteorologists said.

Temperatures today are expected to be at, or only a degree above, freezing throughout northern and central Arkansas.

Mid-to-upper 30s were expected for El Dorado and Texarkana, according to the National Weather Service in Shreveport.

In northeast Arkansas, temperatures won’t rise above freezing until Thursday, said meteorologist Zach Maye with the National Weather Service in Memphis, meaning that areas with as much as 5 inches of snow - Corning and Pocahontas - stand to see little melting for a week.

Meteorologist Jeff Hood with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock said the snow on the ground would probably remain for about a week in north-central Arkansas, especially in Calico Rock and Mount Sherman which each received about a foot of snow.

In central Arkansas, the freezing rain and sleet that fell last week will begin melting, especially on Monday, Hood said. Little Rock, North Little Rock and Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville all had received about 1 inch of sleet mixed with snow, he said.

In Northwest Arkansas, temperatures are expected to start rising above freezing Monday, melting much of the snowfall and ice by Tuesday.

Pea Ridge got a foot of snow Thursday and Friday. Fayetteville, Siloam Springs, Bentonville and Bella Vista all got about 7 inches of snow.

Wintry weather came earlier than usual this year, meteorologists said, but that’s happened before.

Snyder said Fayetteville’s average low temperatures are just below freezing for this time of year, with highs of about 50 degrees. However, on Dec. 7, 1950, the city’s low was minus-7 degrees.

TRAVEL STILL A TANGLE

For people traveling by air into and out of Little Rock, Saturday had far fewer flight cancellations than the previous day.

On Friday, 50 of the 88 scheduled flights at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport/Adams Field, were canceled, said airport spokesman Shane Carter.

As of 2 p.m. Saturday, nine flights had been canceled for the day, including eight American Airlines flights to and from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, where wintry weather problems lingered. A ninth flight to Charlotte, N.C., was canceled because the plane was unable to arrive in Little Rock on Friday night.

“It’s nothing compared to yesterday,” Carter said.

For today, Delta Airlines had already canceled two early morning flights to Atlanta in anticipation of the storm’s migration east, Carter said.

The weather has been an issue for the Little Rock airport much of the week. Heavy fog Tuesday and early Wednesday resulted in a number of flights being canceled those days, he said.

At the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport at Highfill, American Airlines flights to and from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport were canceled Saturday, according to the airport website.

Otherwise, airport operations manager Kelly Johnson said air traffic at that airport was back to normal.

But the state’s roadways were another matter.

The Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department continued Saturday to urge drivers to stay off icy highways.

Department crews in northwest and western Arkansas worked around the clock Saturday and were hoping that sunshine would help melt the ice off the roads.

Temperatures remained below freezing in many parts of the state Saturday. In the northwest corner, Highway Department District 9 engineer Steve Lawrence said the roads weren’t going to clear until the weather warmed, though “if the pavement is exposed [to sunshine], the radiant energy of the sun will start to melt the ice.”

The 400 employees in Highway Department Districts 4 and 9 continued to share the workload in 12-hour shifts, with half of the employees working at a time manning a fleet of spreaders, plows and graders.

“All our forces are out, and we’re busy trying to get the stuff off the roads,” District 4 maintenance engineer Thale Keisling said Saturday. “If it warms up today, we ought to be able to make some good headway on it.”

Lawrence and Keisling said no state highways were closed in their districts. District 4 consists of Crawford, Franklin, Logan, Polk, Scott, Sebastian and Washington counties. District 9 comprises Baxter, Benton, Boone, Carroll, Madison, Marion, Newton and Searcy counties.

SOME ACCIDENTS

On Friday night, the Arkansas State Police closed the Interstate 30 bridge in Little Rock for a short time so crews could treat the ice-covered span over the Arkansas River, Highway Department spokesman Danny Straessle said. A line of vehicles was stopped on the highway before the crews got there, he said.

But by Saturday morning, Straessle said, most of the highways in central Arkansas were 90 percent clear, though there were some icy patches.

“It wasn’t until the sun came up [Saturday] and reflected off the ice [that] could you tell where those ice patches were,” he said.

A tractor-trailer turned sideways on Interstate 440 in Little Rock early Saturday, blocking all three westbound lanes, he said, backing traffic up to Interstate 40.

Cantrell Road in Little Rock was mostly clear Saturday morning, Straessle said, though the highway “is a problem … it drains across the road.”

According to Lt. Sidney Allen, spokesman for the Little Rock Police Department, crews with the city’s street department had cleared at least one lane on all major roadways, and crews were working their way into neighborhoods.

He said officers responded to 26 mostly one-vehicle accidents between 7 a.m. Friday and 7 a.m. Saturday.

The department increased patrols by a “minimum amount” Friday and throughout Saturday, he said. Depending on overnight conditions, he said Saturday, shift commanders could continue those increased patrols.

The Arkansas State Police also reported several “slide offs,” especially on bridges and overpasses, said spokesman Bill Sadler.

On Saturday, Troop A - which covers central Arkansas - had worked three accidents in which someone was injured, he said.

One occurred Saturday morning on Interstate 40 north of Mayflower.

Sadler said injuries included a driver whose westbound vehicle had slid off the interstate and a friend who had stopped to help him. A westbound tractor-trailer crossing a nearby bridge hit a patch of ice and rear-ended the man’s vehicle, injuring the man and his friend.

One of the men was airlifted to a hospital, while the other was transported by ambulance, Sadler said. He said the injuries were not considered life-threatening. The tractor-trailer driver wasn’t injured.

Sadler also said Saturday that Cpl. Damon Dobson, whose patrol vehicle was struck Friday as he was investigating a weather-related accident on I-40 in Monroe County, suffered minor elbow and head injuries. He was treated and released Friday from the Stuttgart hospital, Sadler said.

Among problem roadways Friday and Saturday were the Interstate 540 corridor in Northwest Arkansas, U.S. 65 north of Clinton, Arkansas 7 north of Russellville and Arkansas 16 west of Clinton.

The biggest challenge is I-540, said Straessle.

“We’ve been addressing it since it [the freezing precipitation] started, and it still requires some work,” he said, adding that the department had crews working solely on the corridor near the Bobby Hopper tunnel.

The interstate is about 2,000 feet above sea level and has some of the highest bridges in the state, he said.

But Straessle said he was confident that Saturday’s sunshine would significantly help the road conditions.

“The sun is out. The wind is blowing,” he said. “That kind of helps promote drying.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/08/2013

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