The weather year for 2011 started out very cold and snowy before transitioning to a stormy spring. This was followed by a hot and dry summer that moved into a fall that began dry and ended wet.
Snowy start
“All plows and motor patrols are out today,” said James House, District 2 engineer with the Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department on Jan. 10, 2011, after 4 inches of snow fell on the Pine Bluff area.
Pine Bluff Police Department Lt. Bob Rawlinson said at the time that officers were trying to respond as rapidly as possible to calls as well as looking for vehicles that might have slid off into ditches because of the icy conditions.
Around an inch of snow fell on Pine Bluff on Feb. 5 but that was only the prelude to a five inch snow that fell on Feb. 9 that shut down government offices and school systems throughout Jefferson County for several days.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Jefferson County Judge Mike Holcomb was out surveying the roads during the Feb. 9 snow.
“I’m out driving around right now and there are cars everywhere that have slid off the roadways,” Holcomb said at the time.
Stormy spring
The spring months were notable for the prolific rains that caused the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers to rise to historic levels in Southeast Arkansas.
A potent storm system moved through the area on April 4 that left tree damage and power outages in its wake.
Dollarway High School and the Dollarway District’s administrative offices lost power for more than an hour during the morning hours.
“I was holding a meeting when the outage occurred but I just took out my flashlight and continued the meeting,” former Dollarway Superintendent Arthur Tucker said at the time.
The Pine Bluff Fire and Emergency Services Department was busy responding to calls during the April 4 storm.
“The department has been busy responding to EMS calls about trees knocked onto power lines,” fire department spokesman Lt. Harold Clark said at the time. “We have been sending out trucks to secure the areas where lines have been brought down and then have the trucks remain on scene with their emergency lights engaged until power crews arrive on scene.”
The rainy weather began in earnest in late April, with the Arkansas River at Pine Bluff placed in a flood warning on April 27.
“Areas of the Arkansas River basin upstream of Pine Bluff have experienced a lot of rain in the past few days,” Tabitha Clarke, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Little Rock, said at the time. “West Central Arkansas around Fort Smith has had upwards of 10 inches and all of that rainfall is going down river.”
The Arkansas River at Pine Bluff peaked at 43.29 feet, or 1.29 feet above flood stage on April 29.
The Mississippi River in Southeast Arkansas caused flooding problems throughout May, with the Greater Pine Bluff Chamber of Commerce, now known as the Pine Bluff Regional Chamber, heading to McGehee on May 24 to feed several hundred hungry Arkansas National Guard troops on Mississippi River flood duty.
“The Guard troops are based in McGehee, living in a tent city, and are working down in Lake Village, monitoring the levees along the Mississippi River in that area and sandbagging where it is needed,” Chamber Communications Director Jennifer Kline said at the time.
Long, hot summer
As late spring turned to early summer, the weather shifted from being too wet to being too dry, with county burn bans steadily growing in number throughout June.
Jefferson County Judge Holcomb expressed his view on the potential imposition of a Jefferson County burn ban as the Fourth of July holiday approached.
“It’s getting real close,” Holcomb said at the time. “If we don’t get any rain in the next few days, and it’s not looking good, we’re going to have a burn ban in place soon. I don’t want to upset people’s Fourth of July plans but I don’t want the county to burn up either. It’s stayed so hot even overnight that the plants can’t get their nutrients and they’re in trouble.”
A burn ban was eventually issued for Jefferson County on July 13 that lasted until Aug. 22 due to the prolonged high temperatures and drought conditions that gripped southern Arkansas.
Jefferson County residents endured an extremely hot summer, with the peak of the heat wave arriving on Aug. 3.
Pine Bluff hit a high temperature on that date of 110 degrees, breaking the old record for the date of 109 degrees set in 1918.
Little Rock hit 114 degrees, an all-time high temperature record for any date in the capital city.
Little Rock’s previous all-time high was 112, set on July 31, 1986.
Fort Smith also knocked out an all-time record high, hitting 115 degrees on Aug. 3 to surpass the previous record of 113 degrees set Aug. 10, 1936.
Charles Dalton, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, explained that the culprit for the hot weather was a large upper level high pressure system over the central United States.
“These upper level highs compress the air beneath them, which allow temperatures to continue to rise day by day, resulting in the limiting of clouds and a generally stagnant weather pattern, ” Dalton said then.
Fall begins dry, ends wet
The dry weather that persisted for much of the summer of 2011 persisted into the fall, with conditions in early October remaining parched.
“We have been experiencing an extended period of dry weather in Arkansas but this time of the year can be some of the driest that we experience here in the state,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Marty Trexler said on Oct. 10.
The dry weather became a distant memory as November moved in and several stalled fronts focused moderate to heavy rainfall on Arkansas according to the National Weather Service.
Pine Bluff’s Grider Field reporting station came in with 11.32 inches of rain in the thirty day period from Nov. 11 to Dec. 11, giving Pine Bluff a surplus of 6.05 inches for the year, according to NWS records.
Outlook for early 2012
NWS meteorologist Dalton said that long-range forecast models from the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration point to an overall milder winter season for Arkansans in 2012 than was experienced in early 2011.
“We are experiencing La Nina conditions this winter, which traditionally means warmer than normal temperatures and less than normal precipitation,” Dalton said. “Of course so far we are well above normal in precipitation. Looking forward into the winter we are looking at generally above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation in Arkansas.”
“There are a couple of wild cards in the mix, with the biggest being the Arctic Oscillation,” Dalton said. “This has to do with the surface pressures over the poles versus the mid-latitudes and whether they are higher or lower than normal pressures. A positive index number for the oscillation means strong westerly winds keep cold Canadian air in the arctic. We had a negative index last year and that led to the several bouts of snow we had here in Arkansas. So far this year because the index has been positive, there has not been much in the way of cold air coming into the U.S.”
Dalton said that even though the winter is forecast to be warmer and drier than average, the possibility of one or more snow events is not out of the question.
“There is no definitive yes or no on what will happen, it’s just that in La Nina conditions the chances are for warmer than normal conditions,” Dalton said.