Highway and road crews were ready for the Christmas Day storm that moved up from the south and blanketed the most of the state but spared its northwest corner.
“It was nutty out there,” said Roger Wallace who drove home to Fort Smith on Interstate 40 on Tuesday afternoon after a Christmas gathering with family in Jonesboro.
Vehicles were spinning off the interstate and littering the median all across the state, he said. He saw motorists parked at truck stops to wait out the storm, but he pressed on, finding road conditions improvedas he drove west.
“When we hit Alma, the road cleared up nicely,” he said.
It appeared the heaviest snow in western Arkansas stretched from Mena north through Scott County and into the Booneville area, said Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department District 4 Engineer Joe Shipman.
No roads closed in District 4’s zone of Crawford, Franklin, Logan, Polk, Scott, Sebastian and Washington counties because of snow, Shipman said.
Arkansas State Police in Fort Smith reported 29 minor accidents in its fivecounty territory Tuesday and Wednesday. Power companies reported no customers in western Arkansas lost electrical service because of the storm.
By noon Wednesday, sun melted snow on roads throughout the area. Franklin County’s emergency-management coordinator, Fred Mullen, said he was concerned about runoff from the melting snow refreezing Wednesday night and making roads slick this morning.
According to the National Weather Service office in Tulsa, the Mena area received about 7 inches of snow; Greenwood had 6 inches; andCharleston had 5 inches.
Snow totals diminished farther north. Less than a quarter-inch fell on the Crawford-Washington county line around Interstate 540 and in Carroll and Madison counties, according to weather service data. There was no snowfall recorded farther north to the state line.
Fort Smith received 4 inches, and Van Buren got 3 inches.
Johnson County got mostly sleet, County Judge Mike Jacobs said.
“We came through a lot better than I thought we would,” he said.
The snowfall patterns prompted Shipman to shift snowplow and salt/sanding crews to the south. A crew he normally assigns to Fayetteville went to Waldron instead, Shipman said. The crew that usually works the Mountainburg area was sent to Mena.
State and local road crews were called in early and many worked through Tuesday night. Shipman said crews working 12-hour shifts hadcleared most of the main highways, including the interstates, U.S. 71, Arkansas 10 and Arkansas 23, and were starting to work on smaller highways such as 252 in Sebastian County and 282 in Crawford County.
Fort Smith had one grader plowing the main streets and four salt/sand spreader trucks working main roads and intersections, street department Director Greg Riley said. A skeleton crew was assigned to be on duty Wednesday night to work on secondary roads and emergencies, he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/27/2012