Forecasters are calling for another round of sleet and freezing rain for Arkansas today before temperatures climb enough to turn the frozen precipitation into rain and thunderstorms late in the day.
Northeast Arkansas is expected to take the brunt of the freezing rain because it will take longer for a warm front to creep across the state, said National Weather Service meteorologist Jeff Hood of North Little Rock.
"Most of the state will see some travel impacts in the morning," Hood said, adding that problems will linger in northeast Arkansas, as the mercury isn't expected to climb above 32 degrees until early Saturday.
That corner of the state -- from Hardy to Piggott to West Memphis -- will receive up to a quarter of an inch of freezing rain, meteorologists predict. Areas just north of the Interstate 40 corridor are expected to receive about a 10th of an inch of ice.
In central and south Arkansas, the latest round of wintry weather will begin as light snow and sleet early today and then turn into freezing rain between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. as temperatures climb. Forecasters said Little Rock should see rainfall by early afternoon as the temperature nears 38 degrees.
Northwest Arkansas should be spared, said meteorologist Karen Hatfield of Tulsa. Fayetteville is forecast to receive freezing drizzle early today and then rain by 6 a.m.
"Any remaining frozen stuff will be gone when the rain comes," Hatfield said.
On Saturday, the state will get thunderstorms -- some heavy -- as temperatures reach the 60s in the south and mid-50s in the north.
Today's weather system, which will end with a warming trend, is the opposite of the winter storm Sunday that dumped up to 5 inches of snow in some locations and blanketed much of the northern half of the state with sleet, Hood said. As Sunday's system moved into the state, temperatures dropped from the upper 60s to the 20s within 12 hours.
At least three people died on icy roadways earlier this week, the Arkansas State Police reported.
Sunny skies helped melt ice off roads Tuesday and Wednesday, but highway officials were preparing for the worst overnight Thursday.
"Our secondary roads are still in rough shape," said Alan Walter, district construction engineer for the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department's Paragould division. "We're working on equipment now and will pretreat roads through the evening and into Friday morning."
Walter said the cold air didn't help clear roads Thursday. The highest the temperature reached Thursday in Paragould was 23 degrees, he said.
'"The sun is a big friend to us," he said. "[Today] we won't have any sunshine."
In the Highway Department's 10th District in the state's northeast corner, crews pretreated Interstate 55, U.S. 49 and U.S. 63 with a mixture of salt brine made at the Paragould division. Workers make 1,000 gallons at a time, using a 23.5 percent solution of salt and water.
Crews load it in trucks normally used by the department to spray herbicides along roadways, Walter said.
"We've used some farm-boy ingenuity to convert the trucks," he said. "We can spray about 20 miles of laned highway with 1,000 gallons."
Temperatures remained frigid Thursday. In Fayetteville, residents saw a low of 11 degrees, and Fort Smith reported 23 degrees as its lowest Thursday.
Harrison reported 7 degrees for a low mark, and Mountain Home's 6-degree reading early Thursday broke a record for the lowest temperature for the day, eclipsing the previous low of 10 degrees set in 2006.
"It was freezing," said Sandy Bujacich, the manager of the E-Z Mart on East Ninth Street in Mountain Home. "I get here each morning at 5, and it was cold. I'm from California, where 50 degrees is considered cold."
Bujacich said her store has sold bundles of gloves, de-icer material and ice scrapers. She had sold out of ice scrapers after Sunday's storm and just received a new shipment Thursday afternoon.
"I'll put out them on the front counter," she said. "They'll be gone by tomorrow."
Many schools across the state remained closed Thursday -- the fourth day in a row classes were canceled in some places.
Today's forecast didn't fare well for Judy Pierce,an administrative assistant for the Nettleton School District in Jonesboro.
"We're just waiting for what the weather will do," she said.
The district has five snow days built into its calendar. If classes are canceled there today, as expected, all the days allotted will be used up.
If the district misses more days, it will make them up by adding on to the end of the school year.
The winter storms have been difficult to forecast, Hood said in North Little Rock. Because the jet stream -- a fast-moving current that carries arctic air from the north into Arkansas -- collides with the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico, different levels of the atmosphere have different temperatures.
"When the entire atmospheric profile is below freezing, it's easier to forecast snow," Hood said. "But we have these shallow arctic air masses. We have cold air on the surface, but a few thousand feet up could be a different temperature."
Rain can freeze in the air and fall as sleet if there are no layers of warm atmospheric air, he said. Or, if only the surface air is below freezing, precipitation will fall as rain and the immediately freeze when it hits the frozen surface.
On Sunday, a National Weather Service balloon released in North Little Rock showed the air temperature at 46 degrees 2,000 feet above the surface, while the surface air temperatures stood at 42 degrees.
"There are so many variables that can change and make the forecast complicated," he said.
The rain will move out of the state Sunday evening, and forecasters expect temperatures to reach the upper 30s by Tuesday.
State Desk on 02/20/2015