Arkansas is no stranger to wild and dangerous weather during the Spring months. During the Spring of 2010, this held true. For tornadoes to occur, we must have a balance of instability and wind shear (winds turning with height). These dangerous ingredients for severe weather were present on April 30th, 2010. Due to this amplified environment prepped for storm development several long track dangerous tornadoes spawned. During the afternoon/evening hours of April 30th, 2010, numerous powerful tornadoes occurred leaving extensive paths of damage and communities ripped apart.
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Large tornado that occurred during the afternoon hours in Saline County.
Photo credit: Leslie Hess
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One of the tornadoes tracked 35 miles striking South Bend (Lonoke County) and just southeast of Beebe (White County). The strongest tornado (EF-3) produced by this storm headed through areas between Auvergne and Weldon (both in Jackson County) and destroyed a local church. Other tornado damage (EF-1) was found near Carthage (Dallas County). An EF-1 tornado moved throughout Howard County causing extensive damage in the town of Dierks. In addition to tornadoes, abundant moisture in the atmosphere led to heavy to excessive rain amounts. Near Union Hill (Scott County), heavy downpours filled a low water crossing. A man tried to drive through the water, and then attempted to escape his vehicle and sadly drowned.
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| EF-1 tornado pictured above in Dierks (Howard County) |
During the overnight hours, showers and thunderstorms became more widespread and a heavy rainfall ensued. Two to five inches of rain fell from portions of central and into northeast Arkansas. Twenty four hour rainfall totals through 7:00 am on May 1st included 5.00 inches at West Memphis (Crittenden County) and 3.68 inches at Little Rock (Pulaski County).
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Debris signature on radar due to the EF-3 tornado in Van Buren County.
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Rainfall began to diminish during the morning of May 1st. High pressure in the southeast United States kept a storm system and cold front parked in the Plains. This set the stage for more tornadoes during the afternoon and evening hours. While it was plenty warm and moist, low level shear was limited, thus stalling tornado development. Wind shear increased through the evening, however instability gradually decreased with the loss of daytime convection. There was a lot of rotation aloft in developing storms, this led to numerous reports of funnel clouds. However, there were only isolated tornadoes, mainly in southern and eastern Arkansas.
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| Heavy rainfall amounts on May 1st, 2010. |
More heavy rains fell on the evening of May 1st, especially throughout the eastern half of the state into Tennessee. Forty eight hour totals through 7:00 AM on May 2nd were in the 5 to 8 inches range with locally higher amounts from central into northeast Arkansas. The flooding was very dangerous and sadly led the a death of a Saline County resident due to being swept into a culvert.
We hope you enjoyed this historic weather event blog. Once again a huge thanks to the National Weather Service for the graphic and historical information. Without them, most of these blogs would not be possible!
-AW Team
Graphic and information credit: https://www.weather.gov/lzk/
