Arkansas River stages stayed below forecasts of flood level in Pine Bluff after a rainfall event that forecasters said happens once every 25-100 years.
Through the first week of April, 8.35 inches of rain fell on Pine Bluff, but that wasn’t even enough to raise the Arkansas River to the minor flood stage of 42 feet. The river crested at 41.34 feet at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, almost 1.4 feet short of a recent forecast.
The weather event, resulting from a frontal boundary from the southwest to northeast corners of Arkansas, began last Wednesday, leading to many thunderstorm, flash flood and tornado watches and warnings across the state including Pine Bluff and southeast Arkansas. The last flood watch in the area expired Sunday morning.
The Arkansas River stage on April 3, one day into the weather event, was 31.47 feet. NOAA last week predicted an action stage of 40 feet by Sunday and moderate flood stage of 44 feet by Tuesday. Major flood stage is 45 feet.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Karen Blevins, director of the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management, said she knew of no houses affected by the river stage in the county since the storms.
“From the 2019 flood, we had many houses flooded, so it was a big relief we didn’t have any homes flooded out,” she said. “There were a few roads out in the county with water across them. The county put high water signs because of it. Some of the water was from the rainfall and some from the river. It was kind of a dual event there.”
Fifteen to 20 inches of rainfall on the Arkansas River in southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma led record-setting flooding in May and June 2019 down the river into Arkansas, damaging homes in low-lying areas of Pine Bluff. Blevins said the OEM reached out to people affected by that flood to make sure they were prepared for any emergencies this time.
“I developed a little contact list and they were aware and knew what was going to happen,” she said. “Most of them out there, they know what to do in the event of a flood.”
The Arkansas River at Island Harbor Marina and Riverside roads posed very little threat to the neighborhood, although the water all but covered a ramp from Riverside Road.
Other notable effects from the storm system included flooded streets and landmarks such as Regional Park and Townsend Park on Pine Bluff’s north side. Pine Bluff High School’s Jack Robey campus sustained interior flooding as up to 2 inches of water in the enclosed courtyard seeped into the hallways, leading the school district to close the campus for the day. Low-lying areas alongside Olive Street turned into visible rivers, with water nearly reaching billboards.
County officials addressed some washed-out gravel roads, Blevins added. In some cases, she said, the washout left a big hole making the roads not passable.
Pine Bluff Wastewater Utility’s lift station near Bayou Bartholomew and Hazel Street was flooded to the point workers had to access it by boat, utility general manager Ken Johnson said.
“We had a few high water calls from residents,” Johnson said Sunday. “No one service was ever compromised. The only station outage was at the Grider Field airport. All stations are fully operational at the moment, and keep in mind we have standby generators. We were discharging some 26 million gallons a day, and we are moving some water.”
Johnson added his crews did a great job of handling an enormous amount of rainfall.
The frontal boundary spawned 11 tornadoes in Arkansas during the past week, according to information from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet at Iowa State University. Two of those tornadoes occurred within 19 minutes of each other last Wednesday in or near Almyra, between Stuttgart and DeWitt.
The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management said on the social media platform X on Tuesday morning that crews are working around the clock to assess damage and it is still meeting resource requests to affected areas. Two people died and 14 were injured in Arkansas as 63 of its 75 counties reported impacts from the weather event, according to ADEM.
