Early Wednesday storms create hail, tornado unverified

The slow start to the nation's tornado season came to a blustery end Wednesday when tornadoes hit Arkansas and Oklahoma.

A possible tornado in Northwest Arkansas during the first round of Wednesday's severe weather was tracked by radar in the Beaver Lake area just before 5 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.

First responders were unable to find damage on the ground to match a spotter's report of tree damage in the War Eagle area, said Robert McGowen, Emergency Management director for Benton County.

"If there was one we have not been able to confirm it," McGowen said.

The search for damage was all based on drive by inspections. Earlier in the evening the rain was too heavy.

"It's so rural it's possible we might have to find it from the sky," he said.

Radar indicated a tornado at 4:49 p.m. Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. A tornado warning was issued at 4:51 p.m. that touched eastern central areas of Benton County, west central areas of Carroll County, northern Madison County and northwestern Washington County.

Locations in the path of the weather included Sonora, Monte Ne, War Eagle, Hobbs State Park, Clifty, Best, Beaver Lake, Larue, Lookout and Bland. A second warning was issued at 5:02 p.m. noting low-level rotation and the possibility of tennis ball-sized hail. The storm was then 5 miles east of Lowell.

There had been no calls reporting damage to Benton County Central Dispatch at 5:50 p.m., shortly after the storm moved through.

The reported tornado continued through northern Madison County early Wednesday evening, peeling roofs off of chicken houses, destroying a barn and uprooting trees along Arkansas 127, north of Clifty.

The Larue community had golf ball-sized hail.

There was still hail on the ground more than an hour after the storm had passed, said Rick Loots. The storm cracked two car windshields and dented a metal roof at his house in Larue. The house was vibrating with the force of the hail, he said. A neighbor lost a greenhouse to the storm.

The hail was about two inches across and filled the gutters leaving rain flowing over the edge. The ground was white and covered with hail. He estimated there was still a half-inch of hail on on the porch -- and that they had tried to sweep off -- an hour after the storm. About 20 percent of the hail that fell was still melting in his yard.

"There was a lot of it," he said.

People in Clifty reported hail anywhere from a quarter-inch to golf ball-sized hail, said Meredith Miller, owner of Clifty General Store. The storm went north of the store as she watched but people called in and told her a barn blew away on Arkansas 127 about a mile north of the store and trees were down in the road. Another customer called and said the roof was gone from a barn on Arkansas 23.

"I had people calling in like crazy," Miller said.

A day earlier, the Weather Service's North Little Rock issued a tornado warning for northern Boone and northwestern Marion counties at 6:55 p.m., when meteorologists spotted a storm system that later spawned a waterspout -- a tornado that remains only on water -- on Bull Shoals Lake west of Peel in Marion County.

They were the first tornado warnings issued in the state by the National Weather Service since Oct. 13, said meteorologist Jeff Hood of North Little Rock. The five-month span between warnings was one of the longest noted by the Weather Service, he said.

Tulsa (Okla.) County Sheriff's Capt. Billy McKelvey said one person was killed in a mobile home park near Sand Springs in the Tulsa area that was nearly destroyed Wednesday amid severe weather. It wasn't yet clear whether it was a tornado or straight-line wind that hit the mobile home park. McKelvey couldn't say exactly how many people were injured, but said there were multiple injuries.

The Weather Service in Tulsa also issued a tornado warning for the Tulsa area Wednesday evening.

Forecasters have credited the decline in tornadoes across the country so far this year to lower temperatures in the eastern United States and higher temperatures in the west. Tornadic weather generally forms with the inverse weather ingredients, as cold air from the west clashes with warmer air to the east.

Sirens also went off at Moore, Okla., where 24 people died in a top-of-the-scale EF5 tornado in 2013. Television coverage Wednesday evening showed a small twister on the ground. Another tornado was reported near the fairgrounds in western Oklahoma City.

Before this week, only about two-dozen twisters had been recorded this year during a period when about 120 are typical. The last time the U.S. had no twisters in March was nearly 50 years ago, according to figures from the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

Information for this article was contributed by Amye Buckley of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Kenneth Heard and Bill Bowden of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and The Associated Press.

A Section on 03/26/2015

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