A line of storms stretching from Arkansas' southwestern edge to its far north spawned possible tornadoes and left a trail of damaged homes and power failures involving more than 23,000 people Saturday, authorities said.
The National Weather Service issued more than two dozen severe weather advisories, severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado warnings Saturday as the storm line raced across the state.
A warning issued for Lonoke County indicated that winds reached upward of 70 mph in that area Saturday evening, National Weather Service Meteorologist John Lewis said.
Arkansas Department of Emergency Management spokesman Melody Daniel said no injuries had been reported to that office as of 5 p.m., though a handful of counties had reported damage to buildings and roads blocked by downed trees.
"I think it's safe to say we've had isolated tornadoes, but they're brief and weak if they're there," Lewis said. "We're going to find some of those, but overall the event hasn't been as huge as it could have been. We expected more than what we've gotten."
A power-failure map for Oklahoma Gas and Electric, which supplies power to much of Northwest Arkansas, said more than 14,000 customers in the Fort Smith area and more than 1,000 customers in the surrounding areas were without power as of Saturday evening.
Entergy Arkansas reported about 8,400 customers were without power statewide as of 6 p.m. Saturday.
Early Saturday afternoon, high winds from what could have been a tornado toppled trees and damaged multiple buildings in Fort Smith, Daniel said.
The National Weather Service will confirm whether the storms were tornadoes in the coming days, Daniel said.
Scott Lucas, a Fort Smith resident, said strong winds toppled a large pecan tree near his home and damaged a shopping mall nearby.
In photos that Lucas provided to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, debris surrounds a van with a window blown out in the shopping center, a mass of broken wood and rubbish covers the parking lot and portions of one building's roof are ripped off and lying on the ground.
The Arkansas Department of Transportation's iDrive portal showed multiple road closures in Sebastian County because of downed power lines as of late Saturday, including Arkansas 10, Sebastian County 255 and Sebastian County 271.
U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said on Twitter that tornado damage had been "confirmed throughout Sebastian County" and that there were no reported injuries Saturday afternoon.
In Ozark, about 40 miles east of Fort Smith, high winds toppled the Hillybilly Walk of Ozark High School, a collection of granite stones engraved with the names of graduating classes going back as far as 1950, said Ozark Public School District Superintendent James Harper Ford.
"We didn't have any damage to our actual school," Ford said. "There must have been high wind in there today that blew one of them over, and it just knocked into the others like dominoes."
Ford said there was no damage reported to school buildings, though a few fallen trees landed on fences at some of the campuses.
Lewis said the fast-moving line of storms whipped up in northwest Texas overnight Friday and swept across Oklahoma and Arkansas on Saturday. It's expected to be in Iowa today.
Lewis said the storm system likely dropped an inch or half-inch of rain in most of the state but not enough to raise already high river levels.
The same system produced an EF2 twister Saturday morning that traveled for about half a mile in Geronimo, about 80 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, The Associated Press reported. Two homes were damaged, and one person went to a hospital as a precaution.
Lewis said Arkansas will have some respite from severe weather for a few days before another storm system moves in from the west Wednesday.
Metro on 05/19/2019