The National Weather Service confirmed Monday that at least five tornadoes touched down in the state Sunday, but no injuries or deaths were reported.
An EF1 tornado touched down about 8½ miles southwest of Waldron in Scott County, another was confirmed at Mountain Harbor Resort and Spa on Lake Ouachita in Montgomery County, and a third touched down at Dermott in Chicot County, according to the National Weather Service.
Two other tornadoes, both classified as EF0, were confirmed near Marvell and Lexa in Phillips County.
According to the enhanced Fujita scale, EF1 classification means a tornado contained winds between 86 to 110 miles per hour. The scale ranks tornadoes in damage and winds from EF0, with winds between 65 and 85 mph, to EF5, which has winds in excess of 200 mph.
National Weather Service crews are headed back out today to assess whether other tornadoes touched down Sunday as storms made their way across Arkansas.
Most of the damage sustained Sunday came from strong winds and hail, said Tabitha Clarke, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock.
The latest round of severe weather capped a week in which much of the state experienced heavy rainfall that caused flooding throughout the state, but Sunday's storms didn't significantly add to the high water. The heaviest rainfall Sunday was between 1 and 2 inches, which occurred in central Arkansas, where some of the larger cells passed.
"It didn't really contribute much to the river flooding," Clarke said. "If it did anything, it just kind of delayed things from falling."
Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Monday added three more counties -- Scott, Columbia and Prairie -- to the list of declared disaster areas since rain began falling over much of the state Wednesday, bringing the total number to 16.
The other counties declared disaster areas are Arkansas, Ashley, Bradley, Calhoun, Chicot, Cleveland, Desha, Drew, Jefferson, Lincoln, Monroe, Ouachita and Phillips.
Bill Barnes, owner and general manager of Mountain Harbor Resort and Spa in Mount Ida, said one of the resort's 47 docks was destroyed, two others were significantly damaged and another six to eight docks sustained minor damage.
Barnes estimated the damage to be at least $500,000, excluding damage to boats. He said full- and part-time residents store about 1,500 boats at the docks.
"It picked up one steel dock, flipped it over onto the roof of a houseboat dock, and collapsed part of that roof onto the boats," Barnes said. "It broke it loose and blew into the next dock, which collapsed part of that roof.
"So we have roof down on boats, and it's structurally dangerous to get in and do much at this point."
None of the boats sank, he added.
"This whole damn thing didn't last over three or four minutes," Barnes said. "[These storms] will beat you to death and then they're gone."
Three condos and four homes were damaged from trees that knocked against them, and one mobile home was destroyed when four trees fell on it. About 100 people were at the 900-acre resort Sunday, Barnes said.
Herbert Humes and his wife, Janet, of Benton were fishing off the dock near their houseboat when the storm rolled in. The couple quickly sought shelter in the houseboat. The dock was not among those that sustained major damage.
"A big ole wind come up and picked the dock up," Herbert Humes said. "It sounded like it was going to tear the dock off, but it just picked it up and moved it a little."
Barnes said power poles were snapped and lines were broken and strewn about.
Julie Munsell, communications manager for Entergy Arkansas, said the utility started receiving reports of power failures about 3:30 p.m. Sunday and that it peaked with 8,654 places without power around 7:45 p.m. Nearly 250 Entergy workers and contractors were called out to address the power loss.
About 1,700 remained without power as of 11:30 a.m. Monday, Munsell said. Most of them were in the Mountain Harbor area, near Helena-West Helena in Phillips County, and near McGehee in Desha County. Power was expected to be restored in most of those places by 6 p.m., Munsell said.
Mack Ball, county judge of Chicot County, said Monday that there were reports of eight or nine structures damaged Sunday by a tornado as the area continued to deal with an extended stretch of severe weather.
The county was dealing already with flooding from storms that lingered all week in southeast Arkansas. Ball said water is still standing on a large number of county roads and that some houses have up to a foot of water in them. A significant amount of farmland is flooded, as well.
"The weather has affected just about every acre in the county," Ball said.
The Arkansas Department of Corrections' Delta Regional Unit in Dermott sustained damage from high winds to the unit's roof, gymnasium and several utility buildings, said Solomon Graves, spokesman and legislative liaison for the department.
About two-thirds of the unit's vehicle fleet sustained some level of damage, and one correctional officer suffered a sprained ankle during the storm.
"There was some damage to the interior fencing, however the perimeter fence remained intact during the storm and is fully functional," Graves said in a statement.
A second Correction Department facility, the Ouachita River Unit in Malvern, also sustained damage. Hail broke more than 100 windows and skylights, but no injuries were reported.
Damage to both facilities did not affect the operations of the units, Graves said.
The National Weather Service said a tornado touched down at 4:04 p.m. in Waldron and traveled about 4.4 miles south. Its maximum path was about 850 yards, and there were reports of uprooted trees and damage to several buildings.
James Forbes, county judge of Scott County, said one home in the county was destroyed but residents were not at home at the time. He said he believed there was a second tornado in the Harvey-Nola area.
"We had some trees down there, a couple of barns gone and some minor roof damage," Forbes said. "The National Weather Service has not ruled it a tornado, but we know it was because we have a video of it."
Clarke said the forecast doesn't hold much to fret about until possibly the weekend for southeast Arkansas, when a system is expected to move through with nothing more than a pick-up in wind and cloud movement.
As floodwaters began receding Monday in northwest Louisiana, emergency officials along Louisiana's southeastern border with Mississippi were watching the rise of the Pearl River amid widespread flooding that has damaged thousands of homes.
The water has started to ebb from flooded subdivisions in south Bossier City on the Red River in northern Louisiana.
National Weather Service forecaster C.S. Ross in Shreveport said it will take at least a week before homeowners can get back to their homes and assess the damage. A 6-mile section of U.S. 71 from Bossier Parish into Red River Parish was covered by water.
Ross said Red Chute Bayou on the east side of Bossier City did not top the levee as feared. He said there was some seepage, but not enough to reach 3,500 homes.
The National Weather Service pushed back its timeline of flooding from the Pearl River at the southern end of the Louisiana-Mississippi line.
Meteorologist Robert Ricks said the river crested Monday afternoon at the town of Pearl River at 20.3 feet, but it had dropped to about 19.9 feet by 6 p.m. He said it would be another 24 hours before the river possibly encroaches on Interstate 10 or other highways.
"It remains to be seen if it will go across the interstate or not," Ricks said.
At least four deaths have been reported in Louisiana amid the flooding that began last week, and the search continued for two fishermen missing since Wednesday in Mississippi.
Flood warnings were in effect for most of north Louisiana and scattered sections in the southern part of the state. In Mississippi, flooding warnings are in effect for areas along streams and bayous.
Louisiana emergency officials said nearly 5,000 homes were damaged. That number is expected to rise as more reports come in from areas still battling floodwaters. Mississippi reported that 185 homes were damaged by floodwaters and about 650 homes sustained minor damage.
Information for this article was contributed by Bill Fuller, Cain Burdeau and Nassim Benchaabane of The Associated Press.
State Desk on 03/15/2016