HIGGINSON -- Jason Hollis feared the worst when he arrived at his 84-year-old grandmother's wrecked home in this White County town Tuesday evening.
Hollis sprinted past the downed power lines, the snapped trees and an overturned car into the home, hoping to find his grandmother unharmed.
"She was OK, but she was pretty shook up," he said.
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Severe weather raked across the state Tuesday evening, spawning a possible tornado in White County that injured 10 to 15 people and downed multiple trees and power lines, said Melody Daniel, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management.
The injured were taken to a local hospital for treatment, and the Red Cross opened up a shelter in Searcy, Daniel said. The conditions of the injured individuals were not known Tuesday evening, she said.
Higginson Police Chief Eric Patterson said late Tuesday that 40 to 60 homes in the town were damaged by the storm, and emergency workers planned to work through the night to assess the damage.
Patterson said rescuers got one elderly man out the window of his home because a fallen tree had trapped him inside.
"I've been here six years and never seen anything like this," Patterson said, adding that a tree had fallen on the post office.
According to White County Office of Emergency Management spokesman Terry Lee, the town's American Legion Hall was damaged and two people there were taken to the hospital with injuries.
Three miles away in Kensett, the roof of one home lay on the foundation, and the winds had swept away all of the structure in between.
Trees had fallen across several roads, Pruitt Road was covered in water, and at least four homes had been damaged by the severe weather.
Jeff Hood, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said the storms began between Arkadelphia and Mena on Tuesday, then moved northeast, going north of Little Rock and into White County.
He said plenty of moisture in the air and unusually high temperatures in the lower 70s to high 80s caused the instability in the atmosphere that led to the storms.
Hood said the Weather Service would have to wait until morning to figure out if the damage was caused by a tornado. Officials will meet with the White County Office of Emergency Management to survey the damage.
Severe storms are known to form in the spring during the transition to warmer temperatures, he said.
"It's not all that uncommon [for] Arkansas," Hood said.
As of Tuesday night, Hood said he expected severe weather to occur overnight and dissipate by daybreak.
Daniel said White County was the only county to report storm damage.
At a state high school basketball tournament in Bald Knob, about 15 miles from Higginson, a tornado warning sent basketball players, coaches, officials and volunteers into a safe room for around an hour before they resumed play, said Fred Conley, who was reporting on the tournament.
Back in Higginson, the carport from Hollis' grandmother's home had been blown 30 feet.
Hollis' cousin, Elizabeth Fiddler, surveyed the damage with a flashlight, remembering the games of hide-and-seek she played with her cousins among trees now damaged.
"We all grew up here," Fiddler said, taking a deep breath. "It's just ... just devastating."
"It's crazy, it's something you never think will happen to you," Hollis said.
Metro on 03/01/2017