Storms' round 2 roughs up state

A second round of storms Friday knocked out power to thousands of people in central Arkansas and spawned a short-lived tornado that injured two people in Batesville, and forecasters warned that more volatile weather is expected over the next several days.

Entergy Arkansas reported more than 45,500 homes and businesses were without power at the blackout's peak, with more than 20,000 losing service in Pulaski County. Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas reported on its website that about 4,000 were without electrical service Friday evening.

The line of thunderstorms, called a mesoscale convective system, formed in eastern Oklahoma early Friday and crossed the state, generating high winds and heavy rain to central Arkansas. The system followed a similar pattern to Thursday's storm, which killed two people in northeast Arkansas as it downed trees and damaged buildings with 80-90 mph winds.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jeff Hood said most of the state will see daily thunderstorms over the next week.

"The risk for severe weather is in place for the next five or six days," he said.

In Batesville, a small tornado touched down Friday afternoon near U.S. 167, ripping roofing off hotels and hitting a day-care center, said Glen Willis, the Independence County Office of Emergency Management coordinator.

A woman and a 9-year-old child were slightly injured, he said.

"It formed in north Batesville, crossed 167 and hit a flooring outlet," he said. "Then it jumped up and hit the day-care center. We had cars blown into trees."

The tornado traveled less than a half-mile before dissipating, he said.

To the south, 66-mph straight-line winds blazed through Oil Trough in Independence County and blew windows out of a car dealership in Little Rock, officials said.

The National Weather Service measured a wind gust of 75 mph at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville on Friday afternoon, Hood said.

As the storm ripped through Little Rock, it rattled homes, swayed trees and dumped heavy rain.

A pair of maintenance workers in wet jeans and kneepads took chainsaws to the lone downed tree at the state Capitol, spraying fresh white pulp and chips from a magnolia that once stood more than 40 feet tall. Other crews cleared a myriad of broken limbs and branches scattered across the roads and on the grounds.

Little Rock Fire Department Capt. Jason Weaver said fire crews took more than 60 storm-related calls by late Friday afternoon -- more than four times the number of calls typically received on a weekday.

Gregory Adams said he was sitting in a van parked outside a house at 20th and South Cedar streets in Little Rock when lightning struck the home and started a fire. The fire spread from the upstairs, down through the walls and beneath the home before firefighters could put it out.

"Oh, boom," Adams said. "It was so loud, it'd make you want to jump out of your own skin."

In the Quapaw Quarter neighborhood, several trees lay on the ground, and power was disrupted to much of the area.

Charles Ray, 40, and Bib Mwamba, 36, were inside their Sherman Street apartment when Mwamba looked outside at a strange cloud formation.

"It was getting scarier and scarier, so we took cover," Mwamba said.

"You saw the trees, and they were just crazy," Ray added. "Then the rain came, then the clouds went rushing by."

Public works crews recorded 46 locations where roads were blocked by fallen trees and downed power lines. Among the varied spots where trees toppled were downtown near the Clinton Library, along Pleasant Valley Drive in west Little Rock and in Murray Park along the Arkansas River, city officials said.

Little Rock Public Works Director Jon Honeywell said city crews would work through Friday night and into today to clear roads.

Elsewhere in central Arkansas, storms also did minor damage to the Conway High School roof.

Trim dangled off the roof Friday afternoon, but the shingles were still in place, said Conway Public School District Assistant Superintendent Carroll Bishop.

Winds also reached 60 mph in Mayflower, pushing trees onto power lines in the Faulkner County town still recovering from a deadly tornado in April, police said.

Friday's complex storms replayed those that hammered the northern third of the state Thursday. The series of thunderstorms created a derecho, or straight-line winds produced by the fast-moving system, that traveled from Marion County across the state and into northwestern Tennessee.

Two people killed when trees fell on them during Thursday's storm.

Tom Sanford, 74, of Jonesboro, a retired Jonesboro police officer, was killed when a large tree fell onto his Walnut Street home west of downtown. Charlene Clark of Black Rock, whose age was unavailable, died when a tree fell onto her van parked at the Black Rock school building. She had retired this week as a custodial worker at the school and was there to attend her retirement party.

"She drove to the administration building, and it was raining," said Black Rock Mayor Bonnie Ragsdale, a friend of Clark's. "She was waiting for the rain to stop before she went inside. She was sitting in her van when the tree fell."

Across northeast Arkansas, residents spent Friday clearing fallen trees from yards and roadways.

At Arkansas State University in Jonesboro -- where damage including trees down, power failures and roof damage to the administration building -- numerous city workers, contractors and university employees worked to get the campus back in shape.

Some administrators were moved to temporary quarters until water-damaged offices could be fixed up, although the Testing Center in the Reng Student Union will reopen today. Monday registration for incoming freshmen will also go on as planned.

In downtown Jonesboro, members of the First United Methodist Church on Union Avenue mopped floors and gathered soaked insulation after Thursday's high winds ripped part of the church's roof off. Workers stretched a blue tarp across the hole Thursday evening, protecting the inside from Friday morning rains.

Adrianne Cruz, the church's learning center director, said she was in the church Thursday when the roof came off.

"I saw the ceiling tiles moving up and down," she said. "I thought maybe a window had broken out. Then we realized the roof was gone."

She corralled 85 children who were in the church's day-care center and hurried them to a safe area inside the building. However, rain began pouring through the gaping roof, and she moved the children to the sanctuary.

Nathan Eddington surveyed damage at the Jonesboro Municipal Airport on Friday, when workers up-righted a Cessna 150 aircraft they said was tossed 50 feet into the air when winds topping 90 mph blew through.

Eddington was outside, trying to tie down a crop-dusting airplane that had just landed when the storm hit.

"I saw the crop duster dancing around," he said. "It was crazy."

He ran and huddled by the eastern side of a large metal building near the airport's main runway. Rainwater blew over the building like a 'dome,' he said.

The winds blew the crop-duster about 200 yards across the concrete runway and into a field.

Craighead County Office of Emergency Management coordinator David Moore said wind gusts approached 100 mph during the storm. Several light poles snapped along the U.S. 63 bypass, and 95 percent of the city was left without power after the storm's peak Thursday.

Three people had minor injuries from flying debris, he said.

"We were really lucky more people weren't hurt," he said. "We had a very massive event. It was widespread."

The weather service is calling for another round to strike the state today.

"The northern half of the state is in the bulls-eye for a complex of thunderstorms," Hood said.

He said Friday's storms may have been somewhat weakened by Thursday's rainfall, which cooled the atmosphere.

Still, he said, Little Rock's temperature dropped from 83 degrees to 68 degrees Friday as the storm system passed through, which fueled the storms and created the high winds.

"It's not out of the question to see temperatures drop like that," he said. "There's a chance every day for isolated instances of the mesoscale convective features."

He said the storms Thursday and Friday should remind people of the dangers of strong winds.

"This raises awareness that tornadoes are not the only cause of damage," he said. "This was more widespread. It's a good reminder of how bad severe winds can get without being a tornado."

Information for this article was contributed by Debra Hale-Shelton of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.