Rescue crews battled swift currents in a flooded Carroll County creek near Holiday Island on Thursday while removing a sport utility vehicle that was swept off a low-water bridge during heavy rain Wednesday evening, authorities said.
A witness reported seeing a person in the vehicle as it crossed the Elk Branch Bridge on Arkansas 187 about 10 p.m. Wednesday as strong thunderstorms and a possible tornado raked the area. A rescue team pulled the SUV from Leatherwood Creek late Thursday afternoon but found no one inside, said Nick Samac, director of the Carroll County Office of Emergency Management.
He said teams were scouring the woods downstream in case someone was washed away from the vehicle.
"We got a lot of rain last night," Samac said. "The bridge is washed out. We had to do several swift-water rescues."
Carroll County received between 3.5 inches and 5 inches of rain as storms "trained," or repetitively traveled over the same area Wednesday, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood warning.
Near Berryville, the Kings River rose from 4.68 feet at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday to 12.5 feet three hours later after heavy rain soaked the area.
Storms Wednesday evening in Northwest Arkansas spawned at least three possible tornadoes -- in Benton, Carroll and Madison counties. National Weather Service teams from Tulsa will travel today to those areas to inspect damage and determine whether the storms were tornadoes, said meteorologist Joe Sellers of Tulsa.
The slow-moving system developed earlier Wednesday in Oklahoma as cold air from the west collided with warm, moist air and formed a tornado in Sand Springs, just west of Tulsa. The tornado killed one person and hospitalized at least nine, The Associated Press reported.
Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency for 25 Oklahoma counties that were hit hardest by the storm, including the state's two largest -- Oklahoma and Tulsa counties.
Tens of thousands of Oklahoma residents were without power early Thursday as officials assessed the damage.
The storms ended a five-month period in which the weather service didn't issue a thunderstorm or tornado warning in Arkansas. On Wednesday, several warnings were issued as the system headed east after crossing into the northwest corner of the state.
The storms uprooted trees, peeled roofs off chicken houses and destroyed a barn in northern Madison County.
In Russellville, winds of up to 77 mph blew down the second-floor walls and shattered windows in a real estate office on South Arkansas Avenue about 11:45 p.m., said Jim Campbell, assistant director of the Pope County E-911 center. The winds also ripped the roofs off a fitness center and a beauty shop at South Arkansas Avenue and West Parkway.
No one was in any of the buildings at the time, and there were no injuries reported.
Crews cleaned up the debris early Thursday, Campbell said.
"All indications are that it was straight-line winds," Campbell said.
Fort Smith also reported winds of 60-70 mph.
"Everything came together," said National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Dalton of North Little Rock. "It was a solid line of storm systems training up north with one storm after another."
Once the system tracked east and evening temperatures lowered, the storms weakened, he said.
Skies cleared across the state by late Thursday afternoon, and temperatures dipped into the 40s, dropping from the 60s and 70s recorded Wednesday.
The weather service forecast that temperatures would continue to drop, reaching the lower to mid-30s in north-central and northeastern Arkansas by this evening.
Another system is expected to cross the state, and Dalton said there is a slight chance for snow briefly Saturday in north Arkansas.
"As this cold front continues through, a large part of the atmosphere is below freezing," he said. "It will support snow and ice crystals."
He said residents could see a mix of rain and snow Saturday evening, but surface temperatures are warm enough that any frozen precipitation likely would melt quickly.
By Sunday, the mercury is expected to climb back into the 60s for the northern half of the state and even into the lower 70s in the south.
"We'll have quite a range of weather over 48 hours," Dalton said.
State Desk on 03/27/2015