Refuge from the rain
The National Weather Service issued flash-flood warnings covering the southern half of Arkansas throughout Tuesday.
According to the agency’s preliminary information, some parts of the state received over half a foot of rain within 24 hours, with parts of Desha County receiving 9.25 inches.
“[It’s] basically from Little Rock to Memphis along Interstate 40 South and then on the western edge along Interstate 30, so that south-central, southeast Arkansas area,” National Weather Service meteorologist Jeff Hood said. “That area has seen the heaviest rainfall amounts.”
With its region getting the heaviest rainfall, Dumas, in Desha County, had the most severe flooding, with many vehicles getting stuck on flooded streets, according to Police Chief Keith Finch.
“People are driving through high floodwater and some of their vehicles are becoming disabled,” Finch said. “We’re able to help tow them out or they get pulled out by different individuals or trucks large enough to access those areas.”
Finch said drivers were going around barriers set up by authorities.
“They have been driving around the barricades which is causing waves and causing more damage to the people’s homes and everything,” Finch said. “I’m trying to get that stopped and make sure nobody suffers too much property damage.”
According to Finch, it is difficult to assess the damage at the time because of the water in the area.
The weather service in North Little Rock issued it’s first flash-flood warning Tuesday at 3:13 a.m. for Dumas and continued issuing warnings throughout the day.
According to Hood, the flood warnings are not normally this spread out over the state.
“I guess it’s been a little bit more widespread as far as the coverage of heavy rainfall, so when this heavy rain occurs we will address it typically with flash-flood warnings,” Hood said.
Hood said the same system has been dropping rain to the state for the past couple of days, with the storms diminishing at night with the cool air before being powered by the hot air during the daytime.
“The last couple of days we’ve been greeted with this slow-moving upper-level storm system,” Hood said. “And typically we’ll have a leftover thunderstorm complex in the morning hours. Then with the daytime heating, we’ll see that thunderstorm complex kind of get reinvigorated [and] move across the area.”
According to LaTresha Woodruff of the Arkansas Department of Emergency management, other than some street closures there had not been other reports of flooding like Finch reported in Dumas.
“We’ve gotten some calls about flooding in Lee County, Marianna [on] [Arkansas] 1 and Chestnut, and a portion of [U.S.] 79,” Woodruff said. “We also earlier had some reports of multiple roads flooded in Lincoln County and reports of flooding near the Star City area on [Arkansas] 125.”
Lee County Judge Terry Sandefer confirmed the flooding is typical for the county during heavy rainfall.