A 17-year-old Rogers boy died when the vehicle he was riding in with two others slid off an ice-glazed road and plunged into Lake Atalanta on Friday morning as a winter storm system spread yet another round of ice in north Arkansas.
National Weather Service forecasters said a large storm system from the southwest brought moisture into the state, met with cold air in place and created rapidly deteriorating conditions.
For central and eastern parts of the nation, the jet stream has carried in cold air from the Arctic and Siberian regions, creating record low temperatures, a phenomenon some weather observers are calling "The Siberian Express."
As the frigid air moves south, it would typically warm up. But that's not happening this time because the ground is snowpacked along much of that area, said Tim Morrin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in New York.
Sleet, snow and freezing rain peppered northeast Arkansas on Friday, forcing the cancellation of schools and briefly turning highways into skating rinks. The Arkansas State Police reported scores of minor accidents in northeast Arkansas.
In Faulkner County, a school bus slipped off Simpson Road just north of Vilonia on Friday morning. No one was injured. Also, an Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department salt truck turned over on Arkansas 36 while it was treating icy roads near Searcy.
In the Northwest Arkansas accident, an SUV skidded on an icy gravel road that circles Lake Atalanta east of Rogers, rolled down an embankment and plunged into the cold water at 8:40 a.m. Friday, authorities said. It was not snowing or sleeting at the time, said Rogers Fire Chief Tom Jenkins, but the road was slippery.
The slick roadway "was a contributing factor," he said.
Justin Richards, 18, was driving the Jeep Cherokee Laredo along the west side of the lake when the crash occurred.
Richards and a 15-year-old passenger in the back seat were able to get out of the vehicle and call for help. The 17-year-old, whom Rogers police did not name, was trapped in the front seat.
Members of the Rogers Fire Department used two boats to search for the submerged vehicle, and a medical helicopter flew overhead trying to spot it, Jenkins said. Firefighters used 14-foot-long poles to poke the depths as they hunted for the Jeep, he said.
When the vehicle was located, divers with the Benton County dive team lifted the teenager's body to the surface. He had been underwater for three hours, the fire chief said.
"When he was pulled out, he had no pulse," Jenkins said. But paramedics worked on the teenager and were able to briefly detect a faint pulse.
"We realized there was a slim margin of hope," Jenkins said.
Paramedics transported the teenager to Mercy Hospital in Rogers, where he died. The two other teens were also taken to the hospital where they were treated for injuries that weren't life-threatening.
"We wished we had a good outcome," Jenkins said. "But this was a reminder that our [paramedics] don't ever want to give up. We had a lot of people working together, contributing to what we hoped would be a miracle."
In Vilonia, where the bus slid off of Simpson Road, Michelle Garrison, an assistant to the school district superintendent, said there were no injuries in the incident, and students were either taken to the school or home.
"The roads were clear when we decided to have school," she said. "The ice came up suddenly."
Despite the morning's icing, school remained in session there Friday because weather forecasts predicted warming as the day progressed, and roads would be clear by the time school was let out in the afternoon, she said.
Meanwhile, a Highway Department truck loaded with salt flipped over on Arkansas 36 just west of Searcy while traveling to treat treacherous roads at 6:30 a.m. Friday, said Bruce Street, the district maintenance engineer at the department's Batesville division.
"He was headed to a slick spot and got into black ice on the road," Street said of the driver, who was not seriously injured.
Some roads glazed over early in the morning, but the ice soon melted as temperatures rose above freezing.
"I think within the next half hour, we'll be out of the woods," Street said midmorning Friday.
Travel was also difficult along Interstate 40 east of Little Rock.
"We got hit pretty hard," said William Cheatham, district maintenance engineer at the Highway Department's Wynne division. "Little cell pockets of ice kept hitting us over and over."
He said the stretch of interstate between Forrest City and Wheatley was the worst affected. Traffic slowed because of several accidents there, Cheatham said.
"We put a lot of salt down on the road," he said.
The division used more than 2,000 tons of salt to pretreat roadways this week, he said.
In Jonesboro, up to a half-inch of sleet and freezing rain fell Friday morning, said National Weather Service meteorologist John Moore of Memphis.
"It'll be rough throughout the day and into the night," he said Friday of the Jonesboro area. "The area won't warm up in time when more rain comes through. That area could see some heavy freezing rain at times before it turns to rain."
Elsewhere in the nation, bitter cold shattered decades-old records from Cincinnati to Washington, D.C., to New York.
The National Weather Service said the low Friday was 6 degrees at Reagan National Airport, just across the Potomac River from Washington. At Baltimore's airport, the temperature dipped to a record low of 2 degrees.
In western Pennsylvania, temperatures dipped to records of minus 18 in New Castle, minus 15 in Butler and minus 6 in Pittsburgh. Records also were set at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey at 1 degree; zero degrees in Trenton, N.J.; 2 degrees in New York's Central Park; and minus 12 degrees in Cincinnati.
Embarrass, Minn., was the coldest spot in the nation Thursday with a temperature of minus 41, not including the windchill factor. Elsewhere in Minnesota, it was minus 31 in Ely and Fosston, and minus 28 at Bemidji.
The deep freeze transformed New York's Niagara Falls into an icy spectacle, encasing the trees around it in crystals, and creating a scene too enticing for some hardy tourists to pass up.
The Niagara River was flowing underneath the ice cover, so the falls weren't completely frozen. But days of subzero temperatures have created a thick coating of ice and snow on every surface nearby, including railings, trees and boulders.
Back in Arkansas, temperatures warmed during the day Friday. In Fayetteville, the mercury climbed to 37 by noon, and Rogers reached 36 degrees by midday. Texarkana reported 50 degrees at 4 p.m.
Icing occurred rapidly in the northeastern corner of the state, said National Weather Service meteorologist John Lewis of Memphis.
"Where the temperatures have been low for some time, the ice set up quickly," he said. Most of the problem areas, he said, were northeast of Little Rock.
Temperatures are expected to continue to climb today, spawning thunderstorms -- some heavy -- throughout the state.
Lewis warned drivers that temperatures could dip below freezing again tonight, creating ice on some wet roadways in some spots.
"There could be some icy patches on bridges and overpasses," he said.
The wintry weather is not over, Lewis added. The state will see chances for more snow, sleet and freezing rain Sunday evening, Monday and Tuesday.
"Temperatures are well below normal for February," Lewis said. "We could still see more winter ahead."
Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press and by Marc Santora of The New York Times.
A Section on 02/21/2015