Rain to saturate much of Arkansas

Much of Arkansas can expect rain for the rest of this week as Tropical Storm Gordon passes through after moving into the southeastern part of the state late Wednesday.

Originally expected to become the season’s first hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast, Gordon made landfall near Pascagoula, Miss., late Tuesday as a tropical storm with 70 mph wind.

With wind weakening, the storm was downgraded to a tropical depression. Forecasts show it tracking northwest into central Arkansas by this morning producing heavy rainfall.

“Through Saturday it will be pretty wet,” Tabitha Clarke, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock said Wednesday. “Then there’s a frontal boundary from our west slowly moving its way here, as well. When it gets here, it will stall. So we’re sort of in between those two weather features.”

The eye of the storm is forecast to produce the heaviest rainfall of up to 6 inches through Saturday as it passed through the state, Clarke said, with some locally heavier amounts possible. The Little Rock area is under a flash flood watch from 7 a.m. today through 7 a.m. Friday, according to forecast advisories.

There will be an isolated tornado threat on the eastern side of the forecast track this afternoon, Clarke said, but for the most part winds are expected to peak at 20-25 mph.

“Once this leaves southeast Arkansas, it will be on a northwest track to the west-central area, then swing off toward the northeast,” she said. “It will be trapped in front of the frontal boundary that’s coming, then it gets pushed off to the east.”

Meteorologist John Moore at the National Weather Service in Jackson, Miss., said Gordon’s impact on Mississippi was less than initially expected because the heaviest of the storm’s rainfall had shifted eastward. Up to 7 inches of rain fell in western Alabama, he said.

“Some places in Mississippi have gotten up to 3 inches of rainfall and some areas can receive up to 5 inches of rainfall,” Moore said Wednesday afternoon. “The heaviest rainfall has been far removed from the center of the storm, more to the eastern side of the storm.”

Even though the storm has weakened, the threat of flash flooding and possibly tornadoes in isolated areas is enough the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management scheduled an “on-call team” from 7 p.m. Wednesday through 7 a.m. Friday in case of severe weather in the state.

“We are fully prepared for whatever the storm brings,” agency spokesman Dan Noble said.

Information about roads affected by high water can be found on the Arkansas Department of Transportation’s website, IDriveArkansas.com.

Flash flood watches stretched Wednesday from the Florida panhandle, through parts of southwest Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa and Illinois.

The storm caused at least one reported death as it made landfall, when an oak tree limb fell into a mobile home in Pensacola, Fla., killing an infant, according to the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office. Several downed trees also were reported along roads in the Florida panhandle.

Red flags were posted along the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, warning beach-goers to stay out of the water because of dangerous rip currents. On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, 12 casinos in Biloxi and Gulfport were ordered closed Tuesday ahead of Gordon’s approach, but all had reopened by early Wednesday.

The storm knocked out

power to at least 27,000 customers Tuesday night in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. By Wednesday afternoon the numbers were down to about 5,800 in Alabama, 3,000 in Mississippi and a little more than 2,000 in Florida.

Rain spun around the storm’s center in the Jackson, Miss., area Wednesday afternoon, and rain bands swept up from the Gulf and dropped more rain on northwest Florida — where 10.48 inches had already fallen at Florida’s Pensacola International Airport by Wednesday morning — through the center of Alabama and into Tennessee.

New Orleans, which had braced for severe flooding, was unscathed.