Severe Storms Sweep NW Arkansas, Leaving 31,000 Without Power

Power poles snapped in half near Springdale. Roads in Benton County flooded and closed. In Van Buren, a suspected tornado tore through Crawford County before dawn, damaging more than 50 structures. The system that swept Northwest Arkansas and the River Valley overnight Friday, August 16, into Saturday morning was severe enough to prompt a state of emergency declaration from Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders before the weekend was out.

At their peak late Friday night, outages reached approximately 31,000 customers across the region. Four electric providers reported simultaneous disruptions: SWEPCO, Carroll Electric Cooperative, Ozarks Electric, and OG&E, with customers losing service across Benton, Washington, Carroll, and Crawford counties. In Washington County, the structural toll was stark; the storms snapped some power poles in half near Springdale and knocked others down entirely.

5NEWS crews reached the damage zone around 2 a.m. Saturday. Photojournalist Nicole Hellman captured footage of an overturned camper amid the debris, one of the more striking images to emerge from the overnight chaos.

Sanders issued her emergency declaration on August 17, citing "danger, hardship, and suffering" caused by the severe thunderstorms and strong winds. The order gave commercial vehicles authorization to bypass Arkansas Department of Transportation weigh stations, clearing logistics for the heavy equipment, oversized loads, transformers, and transmission and distribution materials needed to restore the grid.

Recovery crews lost ground when a second round of storms struck on Sunday, August 18, extending outages and erasing progress made in the first 24 hours after the initial system passed. By Monday, the majority of customers had their power restored, down from the Friday night peak.

The August event was the latest in a damaging year for Arkansas. Sanders had declared states of emergency earlier in May 2024 following fatal tornadoes that killed five people in northern Arkansas, and had authorized $250,000 from the Governor's Disaster Response and Recovery Fund in connection with that event. The succession of emergency declarations across a single calendar year underscored the sustained toll severe weather has taken on the state's infrastructure and communities.