A second levee was later topped in Logan County. That same day, water topped a levee in Perry County, leading to the closure of the Arkansas Highway 60 bridge linking Perry and Faulkner counties. On May 29, Governor Hutchinson formally requested federal emergency assistance for counties along the river he also released $350,000 from the Governor’s Disaster Assistance Fund. Even larger tributaries such as the White River experienced flooding due to a combination of the Arkansas River backing into it and heavy rains in the northwestern part of the state.Īlong the course of the river, people sandbagged their businesses and homes. Continued rain in Arkansas during the flood did not necessarily raise the water level but prolonged the flood, keeping the ground too wet to absorb additional floodwaters. Palarm Creek even started flowing backward across the dam that impounds Lake Conway, leading the shallow reservoir to spill out into neighborhoods. By late May, residents were leaving the Island Harbor Estates neighborhood in Pine Bluff as it became inundated, and 550 homes that lay inside the county’s levee system were at risk in Jefferson County.ĭue to the volume of water, all gates along the river were opened, and water began backing up into a number of tributaries, such as Massard Creek in Sebastian County, Palarm Creek in Faulkner County, and Fourche Creek in Little Rock. As the flooding continued, voluntary and mandatory evacuation orders were issued all along the course of the river. 64 at the Arkansas River bridge in Fort Smith and a section of Arkansas Highway 105 in Pope County early in the flooding by the end of May, more than two dozen state highways were closed due to high water. Flooding led to the closure of a number of highways, such as the westbound lanes of U.S. High-water records were broken all along the river, including at Morrilton (Conway County), where the record had previously been set during the disastrous Flood of 1927.īy May 25, 2019, as many as 200 people had evacuated in Fort Smith about 545 homes in the county were eventually affected. By Memorial Day (May 27), the state was experiencing major flooding at all Arkansas River gauges west of Toad Suck Lock and Dam, as well as in Pine Bluff (Jefferson County), while Little Rock (Pulaski County) was recording moderate flooding. That same day, the Red Cross opened a shelter in Fort Smith as the flood continued, other cities began opening their own emergency shelters. Governor Asa Hutchinson declared a state of emergency on May 24 and sent Arkansas National Guard rescue teams to western Arkansas in advance of the flood cresting there. (Although the sight made for some dramatic images, the actual damage to the dam was reported as minimal.) On May 23, two barges broke loose from the Port of Muskogee in Oklahoma and traveled down the river for twenty miles before slamming into the dam at Webbers Falls and sinking the following day. The flows soon reached more than 500,000 cubic feet per second across the river. Army Corps of Engineers warned that the Arkansas River was flowing too fast to be safe for small boats, with Trimble Lock and Dam near Fort Smith (Sebastian County) recording flows of 170,000 cubic feet per second, or 100,000 cubic feet per second above the level at which a small-craft advisory is enacted. During the same general time period, the Missouri River also experienced catastrophic flooding, for many of the same reasons, and the lower Mississippi River was elevated, worsening the situation.īarge traffic along the river had halted earlier in May due to high water in the Mississippi River. By late May, the Arkansas River’s flood-risk-reduction lakes in Oklahoma had filled, forcing the release of water from those reservoirs. For example, during one week, parts of Oklahoma received between six and twelve inches of rain. During the spring months, especially in May, the Great Plains were hit by repeated storms that brought record numbers of tornadoes and record rainfall high pressure over the southeastern states stalled this weather in the Midwest. First, a mild winter and warmer than usual spring (likely exacerbated by global warming) led to early snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains, the source of the Arkansas River. Several climatological factors combined to produce the flood. In addition, the flood cast light upon the state’s aging levee and transportation infrastructure. The flood along the Arkansas River that occurred in the spring of 2019 broke a number of high-water records and proved to be one of the costliest natural disasters in the state’s history.
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