Two-thirds of state girding for ice, snow

Utilities call in out-of-state reinforcements; road crews suit up for battle

Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department worker Joe Andrews checks the tanks on a truck Wednesday in Little Rock in preparation for wintry weather. The tanks will be filled with calcium chloride to treat icy roads.
Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department worker Joe Andrews checks the tanks on a truck Wednesday in Little Rock in preparation for wintry weather. The tanks will be filled with calcium chloride to treat icy roads.

An approaching Arctic front is expected to coat Arkansas in freezing rain and snow lingering through the weekend, and highway and utility crews were bracing Wednesday for the onslaught.


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“This will be problematic for a while,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Sellers of Tulsa.

Forecasters said freezing rain is likely over Northwest Arkansas early this morning, and accumulations of 3-6 inches of sleet and snow are expected by Friday evening. Temperatures are expected to plummet into the single digits in that region and into the upper teens elsewhere Friday evening.

The weather system is expected to advance into the state, dropping sleet and snow across northern counties and the Arkansas River Valley, and freezing rain in central and eastern Arkansas.

“We’re looking at a sure thing,” said National Weather Service observation programmer Dave Scheibe of North Little Rock. “We’re going to have icing.”

The ominous forecast prompted the state high school football playoffs to be delayed a week and Saturday’s Little Rock Christmas parade to be rescheduled for Dec. 14.

All but south-central and southeastern Arkansas are expected to see some form of frozen precipitation by Friday evening, and another wintry blast is expected Saturday.

The weather service has issued winter-storm warnings across the northern two-thirds of the state. The warning covers from 6 p.m. today until 6 p.m. Friday. It also issued an ice-storm warning for 10 counties in western and southwestern Arkansas, including Fort Smith and Texarkana. The warning said some areas could see from a half inch to an inch of ice.

Anywhere from a quarter of an inch to three-quarters of an inch of freezing rain could fall in an area from the Ouachita Mountains to between Little Rock and Greers Ferry and on into northeast Arkansas, said National Weather Service warning coordinator John Robinson of North Little Rock.

“I would encourage people to be prepared,” Scheibe said. “This has the potential to be a significant storm.”

Utility crews were preparing for the worst. Entergy Arkansas Inc. called for 6,700 additional workers to travel to Arkansas to help restore any lost power, said Brady Aldy, transmission and distribution operations director.

“With a major storm that affects a large area of our territory, power restoration for all customers could take between five and seven days to complete,” Aldy said in a news release.

Mel Coleman, a spokesman for North Arkansas Electric Cooperative, said his utility company - which provides electricity to 36,000 customers in north-central Arkansas - is preparing for a storm similar to the devastating ice storm four years ago.

In 2009, ice snapped nearly 6,000 utility poles and knocked out power to some customers for as long as three weeks.

“We’re telling our members to prepare, prepare,” Coleman said. “It’s better to prepare and not need it than to not prepare and need it.

“We know it’s going to happen,” he said. “We don’t know just where.”

A plus from the 2009 storm, Coleman said, wasthat much of his utility system’s materials were replaced in its aftermath. “The storm took down lines and poles that were old and weaker,” he said. “We have new equipment now.”

During that storm, toppled trees took down many lines. Since then, tree limbs have been cleared away, reducing the chances for more disruptions now, he said.

In Jonesboro, City Water and Light special projects administrator Kevan Inboden has already booked hotel rooms for eight repair crews that will travel from Alabama to help with restoration efforts.

“We did a good job in 2009, but when you live through it, you learn lessons,” Inboden said, referring to the ice storm that cut power to much of the Craighead County city. “We’re going into this proactively. We think it’s money spent on good insurance. We will have damage if we get the half inch of ice forecasted. It’s not if, we have damage, but how much.”

Road crews in Fort Smith installed plow blades and spreaders on city dump trucks Wednesday and made a mixture of sand and salt that workers will spread on roads once icing begins, said Fort Smith Street and Traffic Control Department dispatcher Brooke Davis.

“We’ve gone over out street-sanding routes, and we’ll load the trucks early [today],” she said.

Three crews will work eight-hour shifts until the storm passes, she said.

“At the first sign of something sticking, we’ll send out the spreaders,” Davis said.

In central Arkansas, the Central Arkansas Transit Authority’s Executive Director Jared Verner said in a news release Wednesday that the authority will notify customers about any bus-service modifications, using Twitter and postings on its Facebook page and website at www.cat.org.

Byrant Mayor Jill Dabbs plans to use The Center at Bishop Park as a warming shelter for residents in case of widespread power failures in that area. Also, she urged residents to check on vulnerable neighbors.

“If we don’t receive what is predicted, then we are just that much more prepared for when it does come our way,” she said in a news release.

In north Arkansas, Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery said his deputies have filled their patrol vehicles with gasoline and equipped them with studded snow tires. In 2009, his deputies drove door-to-door in the county checking on residents to ensure they were safe. Many deputies carried chain saws with them to cut through fallen trees to reach the homes.

“It’s on our mind now,” he said. “We’re watching the forecasts closely. I think we did a good job after the fact in 2009. Now, our communications are better before the event. I think that ice storm taught us some things.”

Montgomery said his department added new computers and changed mapping routes for patrols after the storm four years ago. “That helped us realize what could happen,” he said.

On Wednesday afternoon, Chris Jones of CJ’s Electric in Fayetteville finished installing a gasoline generator at the Centerton Police Department. He also installed one for Bentonville earlier in the day and was scheduled to test a few others.

“People have been planning for the past few months,” Jones said. “It’s poor planning if you’re just starting during a storm.”

Scheibe at the weather service expects the Arctic system to leave the state by Friday afternoon. But after a brief clearing, a second wave is forecast to pass through much of the state Saturday.

More snow is forecast for Saturday evening, and freezing rain and sleet for Sunday.

Temperatures are not expected to climb above freezing until late next week, Scheibe said.

“It’ll be much colder Saturday,” he said. “Whatever falls will be freezing then, and it’ll be here for a while.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/05/2013

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