Frigid Arctic blast pummels area

More snow flurries possible as temperatures dip below zero

Daryl Kendrick shovels snow and ice from his driveway Monday on North Gregg Avenue in Fayetteville. Kendrick is pastor of Central Baptist Church, which is next door to the home.
Daryl Kendrick shovels snow and ice from his driveway Monday on North Gregg Avenue in Fayetteville. Kendrick is pastor of Central Baptist Church, which is next door to the home.

Unforecasted flurries will become a familiar occurrence for Northwest Arkansas this week as colder-than-usual temperatures make weather difficult to predict, meteorologists said.

Air temperatures consistently below freezing mean even small clouds are likely to yield snow, said Karen Hatfield, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tulsa.

“This is a very unique situation for forecasters in the area,” she said. “When you get this cold, it’s a lot easier to produce snowfall. We like to joke that it’s a situation where every cloud has a flurry.”

City and county offices throughout the region closed Monday and school districts delayed returning from winter break after up to five inches of snow that had accumulated in recent days and below freezing temperatures created slick roads throughout Northwest Arkansas.

Consistent cold and partly cloudy conditions are expected to keep snow on the ground, with additional snow expected Wednesday evening, Hatfield said.

Temperatures in Fayetteville should dip as low as -1 on Thursday and Friday, she said. The record low for Jan. 8 in Fayetteville was 14 below zero in 1970.

“It’s pretty darn cold,” Hat-field said. “But we’re nowhere near breaking records.”

The average temperature for the week is about 24 degrees, Hatfield said. Forecasts show lows about 25 degrees below average and highs about 30 degrees below average, making sleet and snow much more likely, she said.

The arctic fronts causing these below-normal temperatures are sweeping through much of the eastern twothirds of the nation.

Record snows were reported over the weekend in Vermont, and farmers in Florida scrambled Monday to save strawberries and tomatoes.

In Burlington, Vt., a weekend snowstorm dumped more than 33 inches, breaking a single-storm record of nearly 30 inches set in 1969.

In Nashville, Tenn., where the overnight low was 12 degrees, police believe an 81-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease wandered outside in his bathrobe and froze to death, The Tennessean reported. His body was found early Monday.

Wrecks on icy roads killed at least two other people in West Virginia and Washington, D.C.

In Arkansas, Ashley County authorities and volunteers were still searching Monday for 19-year-old Dusty Evans, who went missing on New Year’s Day after his sport utility vehicle got stuck on a flooded road, sheriff’s chief deputy Marilyn Smith said.

“We’re going to keep searching for him until we locate him,” Smith said.

Driving conditions were so poor in parts of Baxter County that some people abandoned their cars, said Sgt. Ken Grayham with the sheriff’s office patrol division.

In Fulton County, Sheriff Walter Dillinger urged residents to make a grocery store run while they could.

“If they can, get out and get what they need now. But be careful. That’s the main thing,” Dillinger said.

Mark Pahl, assistant manager at Hudson’s Supermarket on Main Street in Harrison, said business had picked up Monday afternoon, “but by no means is it a snow scare yet.”

Pahl expects that will happen today.

Northwest Arkansas residents awoke Monday to find a small dusting of snow covering tracks worn through an existing accumulation that fell Saturday night. The precipitation strained supplies of road crews and created traffic snarls on slick roads, though officials reported no fatal automobile accidents in the region.

Arkansas State Police’s Troop L worked 35 accidents Sunday and Monday, mostly in Benton County and northern Washington County.

Sgt. Gabe Weaver estimated that’s twice as many accidents than the Springdale-based troop encounters during a typical snowfall.

For every accident with enough damage or injuries to warrant a report Sunday, there were about three cases of vehicles sliding off roads and needing merely a tow, he said.

Bentonville resident Kendall Johnson was an hour and 45 minutes late to work at Tyson Foods in Springdale when his four-wheel-drive Toyota Tacoma pickup hit a patch of ice near exit 85 on Interstate 540, spinning 180 degrees before catching its rear bumper on a guard rail.

About 7:40 a.m., Johnson was in the driver’s seat, facing north in the southbound lane of the busy roadway. Heresisted giving the truck too much gas for fear he’d sling into oncoming traffic, choosing instead to wait for a tow truck to lift him from his perch.

“It didn’t seem too bad,” Johnson said. “For the most part, you couldn’t tell where the ice was.”

Road crews worked early in the morning to apply sand, gravel and de-icing chemicals to roadways, continuing a routine they started before the Christmas Day snowfall.

By Monday morning, Fayetteville crews had exhausted most of the 100 tons of rock salt that they combine with sand and water to create road treatments, street department director Terry Gulley said.

The city’s five brine trucks and four salt spreaders concentrate on hills and major roadways before working into smaller residential areas, he said.

“We try to restock after each event,” Gulley said.

Afternoon sunshine worked to thaw roads slightly, said Sgt. Matt Miller of Arkansas State Police Troop I in Harrison. Unexpected Sunday night snowfall re-covered cleared roads.

“It was enough that - last night if you ran your vehicle, it was enough to cover the tracks again,” Miller said of the straggling flakes.

Kelly Johnson, director of Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, said passengers experienced some slight delays as workers rushed to clear ice from 12 planes housed outside overnight.

Most superintendents made the decision to close schools Sunday night. Administrators planned to make similar decisions throughout the week, asking teams of staff to drive the roads early in the morning to determineconditions.

The decision is particularly difficult for geographically larger rural districts, such as Huntsville and Jasper, Huntsville Superintendent Shelby Sisemore said.

“It’s quite a process for us,” he said. “We’ve got 760 square miles, and it’s all hilly terrain and dirt roads.”

The district, which covers all of Madison County, has one of the largest geographiccoverage areas in Arkansas. Sisemore sends a team of eight to every corner of the county before making a determination, a process that starts about 3 a.m., he said.

Huntsville, like many districts, has about six days built into its calendar in case of snow, Sisemore said, but he hopes not to use them all to extend winter break.

“It’s not real good timing,” he said. “But, with Mother Nature, we take it as it comes.”

For a list of weather-related closings, visit www.nwaonline.com.

Rogers Mayor Steve Womack made plans to open the Adult Wellness Center and Rogers Activity Center as warming centers Thursday through Saturday, when temperatures are expected to dip below zero.

Susan Krafft, spokesman for the Northwest ArkansasRed Cross, said the organization would work with county emergency management directors throughout the week to determine if additional shelters are needed.

The Red Cross has responded to 16 house fires in its 19-county coverage area since Christmas day, providing $8,635 of assistance for food and clothing on prepaid Master Cards, a total that doesn’t include hotel stays for displaced families, she said.

The fires were largely at the homes of low-income and elderly people attempting to save money on their electric bills by using “alternative sources of heat,” including space heaters and fire places, Krafft said.

“Folks go to bed with a couple of extra logs on the fire, and they wake up and the house is gone,” she said.

To contact this reporter:

[email protected]

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———Information for this article was contributed by Amy Upshaw, Tracie Dungan, Richard Massey and Dave Hughes of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and by Jeffrey Collins of The Associated Press.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 01/05/2010

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