Two rounds of storms swept through Arkansas on Friday night, buffeting some areas with high winds in excess of 80 mph and rainfall totals of over 3 inches, forecasters said.
In Ash Flat, straight-line winds removed roofs from businesses, threw trailers across parking lots and into ditches, and threw a storage building, John Lewis, senior forecaster at the National Weather Service in North Little Rock, said.
The bureau reported other damage across the state. Roofs were damaged by trees or blown off by high winds in several counties. According to the weather service’s storm reports page, a tree fell on a car in Johnson County, while in Boone County, high winds reportedly ripped the back door of a home off its hinges.
Sites with the most significant rainfall totals generally reported receiving 2 to 3.25 inches, Lewis said. According to forecasters, Little Rock received between 1 and 2 inches.
A number of residents across the state also lost power due to the storm.
Ozarks Electric Cooperative, which operates in Northwest Arkansas and northeast Oklahoma, reported about 25,000 meters were without power at 5 a.m. Saturday morning, though by 10 a.m. the cooperative said it had restored power to roughly 16,000 members.
“By 1 a.m. we recognized the severity of the damage and could see the impact and decided to put our major outage protocol plan in place during the night, “ said Mitchell Johnson, President/CEO of Ozarks Electric. “Our crews are working very hard and are being very effective in getting repairs completed and getting the power back on.”
About 2,300 Entergy Arkansas customers were also without power throughout Saturday, according to Alison Melson, communications manager for the company. Power failures reached their peak at about 3 a.m., with 5,300 people without power, she said. According to Melson, crews are working to bring power back to those still experiencing failures.
“You never really know what to expect when you’ve got high winds,” Melson said. “But this is not out of the ordinary for a storm of the nature we had last night.”
No tornadoes were confirmed in Arkansas, according to Lewis. “They were more of a damaging wind producer, not so much a tornado producer,” he said. Lewis also said the weather service didn’t receive any reports of flash flooding.
“It could have been worse,” Lewis said.