Hail, strong winds reported as storms hit Arkansas

Golf ball-sized hail is shown on the ground after a hailstorm in this March 18, 2013 file photo. (AP/Rogelio V. Solis)
Golf ball-sized hail is shown on the ground after a hailstorm in this March 18, 2013 file photo. (AP/Rogelio V. Solis)


Storms brought high winds and hail to Arkansas on Saturday evening, with severe thunderstorm warnings extending into the night, National Weather Service forecasts showed.

A system of storms expected to produce winds of up to 60 miles per hour and hail up to 1 inch in diameter was moving across the state by 6:45 p.m., a tweet from the National Weather Service in Little Rock showed. By 7 p.m., the storm was moving across the Little Rock metro area.

Forecasters at the National Weather Service station in North Little Rock did not want to speak on the storm that was still developing Saturday evening, saying it might take a few more hours for them to have a full picture of the storm's effects.

At 3:34 p.m. Saturday, the weather service reported golf ball-size hail as the storms moved east-northeast from Pope County into Searcy County.

About four hours later, the weather service's website indicated that hail had been reported in more than a dozen counties, including Benton, Columbia, Crawford, Garland, Grant, Independence, Logan, Lonoke, Ouachita, Pope, Pulaski, Saline, Sebastian, Stone, Van Buren and Washington.

More than 5,200 households in North Little Rock were without power about 7:30 p.m., according to the city Electric Department's website.

Entergy Arkansas' online power outage map showed that about 4,000 customers in the Little Rock area and roughly 2,400 customers in the Russellville area were without power around 7 p.m.

An outage map from the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas reported about 9,100 customers without power in Central Arkansas by 7 p.m., most of them in Perry, Cleburne and Conway counties, with another 1,200 in the dark in Fulton County in the northern part of the state.


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