The Pine Bluff area received 2.82 inches of rain between Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service, while largely escaping any adverse effects.
NWS meteorologist Julie Lesko explained the conditions that brought the rain to Southeast Arkansas.
“Over the last couple of weeks a frontal boundary has been stalled out over northern Arkansas with upper level disturbances coming across and interacting with the boundary, causing them to receive several inches of rain,” Lesko said. “A cold front is finally pushing in from the north and the boundary is being pushed south which brought the rain to the southern half of the state last night. The front is continuing to move south and we can expect some more rain overnight in the southern half of the state.”
Lesko said the rain would end by Wednesday morning and that cool-for-August temperatures along with dry weather will be the primary features of Arkansas weather through the end of the week.
“Behind this cool front we will have some air that is a little bit unseasonably cool for August,” Lesko said. “A northerly flow will give us some cooler air from the Great Plains that will give us lows in the 60s and highs in the 80s through Saturday. Since it is August by early next week we should see temperatures back up into the upper 80s.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Karen Quarles, coordinator of the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management, said that damage reports were nearly nonexistent.
“We had a report of a tree down on a house at 1207 W. 25th Ave. when the storms came through Monday evening,” Quarles said. “That was really the only report we had aside from tree limbs coming down in several places. We haven’t had any real flooding reports. Just the usual street flooding that occurs during heavy rain.”
The rain also ended the burn ban that had been in effect for Jefferson County for the past several days. Jefferson County Judge Dutch King said that the amount of rain was sufficient and over a wide enough area to warrant the lifting of the ban.
Entergy Arkansas spokesperson Sally Graham said that a few hundred customers lost power in the area Monday evening.
“Customer outages in Pine Bluff peaked at 158 around 6 p.m. Monday while the number of Jefferson County customer outages was 750 during the same time period,” Graham said. “As of Tuesday evening we are showing that one customer is still waiting for power to be restored from Monday night’s outages.”