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Mountain Home residents won’t be finding relief from the sleet and freezing rain today as another round of icy weather makes its way through the state.
This week’s winter storm might not have the lights going out like last week’s winter wonderland, but it is creating a thick layer of slipping ice across roads in Mountain Home and throughout the county.
To date, over ¼ of an inch of ice has accumulated in Baxter County yesterday following Monday night’s first round of sleet. And while the temperature is a little warmer today, residents can still expect rainfall to freeze over as temps hover around 29 degrees overnight.
Local governments in Mountain Home and other Baxter County cities will likely remain closed as work crews continue to treat the roads in an attempt to keep those that do need to travel from getting into accidents.
Mountain Home Public Schools and other school districts in the county will remain closed today, burning through another day of planned snow days.
At time of writing, both the City of Mountain Home and the Mountain Home Chamber of Commerce still expect to hold their respective events on Thursday evening. Roads are still expected to be slick on Thursday, so be sure to take extra caution if heading out.
So far, no reports of major power outages have been reported in Baxter County. Baxter Health’s emergency room remains open in Mountain Home. The hospital’s surrounding clinics were closed for Tuesday. Patients should check to see if their clinic has reopened before heading out for appointments.
Central Arkansas and Northeast Arkansas have bore the brunt of this week’s winter storm, collecting between ½ inch to a full inch of ice on the roads.
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has issued a state of emergency following Monday and Tuesday’s ice storms. That declaration has mobilized several National Guard units in the state to assist motorists with getting home safely throughout the state.
One death in the state was confirmed on Monday night after James Edward Sawyer, 60, of Rogers, died when his tractor trailer slid on ice on Guyll Ridge Road in Garfield, Arkansas. His trailer, which was hauling a 30,000 pound piece of equipment flipped over, resulting in his death.
Our Blood Institute, an organization in Arkansas that provides blood throughout the state, has issued an emergency due to blood shortages following the storm. Arkansas’s blood supply dropped to critical levels during last week’s storm.
OBI has issued a call for 1,200 donations of blood per day to maintain an ample blood supply for hospitals.
Last week’s record snow fall shut down power for roughly 29,733 residents in Baxter, Fulton, Izard, Lawrence, Marion, Sharp and Stone. That record snow fall snow, around nine inches, dragged down powerlines and tree limbs, resulting in blown transformers and downed lines throughout North Central Arkansas.
NAEC reported that some 53,000 residents throughout the entire state were impacted by the storm.
Baxter County suffered some of the highest outage rates this year with almost 14,000 residents losing power. Those power outages also affected several neighborhoods of Mountain Home.
Fulton County followed behind with over 6,300 outages. Both Izard and Sharp County’s experienced roughly 4,000 outages each. The remaining counties had outages that ranged from 50 or so residents to a few hundred.
Entergy, another electric company in North Central Arkansas, also saw its fair of problems on last week, with some 1,111 residents out of power in Baxter County. Some 4,400 Entergy customers in Marion lost power. Another 6,000 plus customers lost power in Boone County.
