Utility crews battled below-zero wind chills, more snow and muddy terrain Thursday while working to restore electrical service to several thousand homes and businesses left without power during this week’s storms.
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More than 10,000 customers remained without electricity - many in Crittenden, Craighead and Cross counties - after Tuesday’s ice storm downed trees and power lines in central and eastern Arkansas. At the peak of the storm, more than 61,000 were without service.
Also, temperatures Thursday fell across the state, making working conditions difficult for linemen.
In Rogers and Harrison, the mercury dipped to 5 degrees Thursday morning. In Fayetteville and Siloam Springs, it dropped to 7 degrees. Mountain Home reported a low of 8 degrees Thursday, and Flippin had a low 10 degrees.
Gusty winds dropped the wind chill to minus-9 degrees in Harrison, Bentonville and Highfill. The wind chill is the combined effect of wind and low temperatures on exposed skin.
“It’s terrible,” Highfill city administrative assistant Valerie Davenport said of the bitter cold in the Benton County town. “It’s miserable.The wind is the major nastiness today. Every time we think we’re about to get over this cold, another one comes through.”
Entergy Arkansas reported 7,000 homes and businesses without electrical service Thursday evening, mostly in Crittenden, Cross, Mississippi and St. Francis counties.
Entergy spokesman Sally Graham said northeast Arkansas was one of the hardest hit of the utility’s service area, and 1,365 linemen and other crews were working there to restore power.
She said teams had responded to 588 cases in the region as of Thursday evening. A “case” refers to any work a lineman does, including repairing broken fuses, replacing lines or installing new utility poles, she explained.
Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas reported 3,300 of its customers without service Thursday evening.
“It’s slow, tedious work,” spokesman Rob Roedel said. “We are working in rough rural areas with isolated outages. There are places where we have to rebuild several poles just to get one customer back on.”
He said for his utility, the most damage from the ice storm was in Cross, St. Francis, Poinsett and eastern Craighead counties.
Monty Williams, a spokesman for Craighead Electric Cooperative, agreed that power-restoration efforts are slow-going.
“We’ve got the outages in pockets. They’re scattered, and we have to go one by one to each place.”
Williams said because temperatures have not climbed above freezing since the storm, utility lines remain coated with up to an inch in diameter of ice. Crews have to knock the ice off fallen lines before repairing them.
“If they don’t remove that weight, it’ll snap the lines somewhere else,” he said.
About 1,900 Craighead Electric Cooperative customers remained without service Thursday evening. Williams said it could take two or three more days before all power is restored because of the weather and because, at times, workers have become stuck while driving through muddy fields to reach downed lines.
“We had ice and now mud,” Williams said. “We were double-whammied.”
In Cross County, about 20 people were expected to spend Thursday night at an American Red Cross shelter set up at the Wynne First Assembly of God Church.
The shelter opened Wednesday night, and two people stayed there, said Teresa Jones, who works at the church.
“It is pretty bad in Cross County,” she said of the power disruptions. “Trees have fallen through roofs of homes, and poles are snapped everywhere. It looks like a tornado touched down.”
She said one person called about the shelter and said if it had not opened, he planned to spend the night walking around in the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Wynne to stay warm.
Much of the northern half of the state received snow Thursday, making it the 12th time since November that some wintry precipitation has fallen in the state. The state averages four or five such events yearly, National Weather Service meteorologists have said.
“I’m ready for spring,” Jackson County Judge Jeff Phillips said. “It can’t get here fast enough.”
The wind chill in Jackson County’s county seat of Newport fell to 2 degrees Thursday morning, and snow flurries dusted the ground.
On Thursday, the Newport School District held classes for the first time this week, Phillips said. Many districts in Northwest and northern Arkansas were in the same boat.
“I’m a summer guy,” Phillips said. “But we have to take what we get.”
In Clinton, high winds blew snow sideways and began covering roads, said city administrative assistant Tammie Williams. Schools in Clinton remained closed Thursday because ice still covered secondary roads.
“U.S. 65 is clear,” Williams said of the highway that passes through Clinton. “But not everybody lives on the main road. The county roads are still icy.”
Forecasters are calling for a repeat today of Thursday’s weather.
National Weather Service meteorologist John Lewis said light snow is expected to dust the northern half of the state, and some areas - particularly in the higher elevations in the Ouachita and Ozark mountains - could see up to an inch of snow.
“It’ll be more widespread than [Thursday],” Lewis said of today’s forecast. “It should end by late afternoon.”
Lewis said he’s keeping an eye on a stronger system to the west that could bring a winter storm to Arkansas on Monday or Tuesday. This one, he said, will likely mean freezing rain and more snow for central and southern Arkansas.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/07/2014