Not since the ice storm of 2009 has Eureka Springs seen such severe winter weather as experienced in the two middle weeks of February. The power was off for more than a week in 2009, while it was off for only a few hours during the recent storms, but this year, the cold lasted much longer with temperatures well below freezing for nearly two weeks.
Residents on many of the side roads of Eureka Springs didn’t see mail delivery or garbage pickup for about two weeks. Shelters were open, but few people took advantage of them. The city was able to keep main thoroughfares open but said the steep side roads were not safe to snowplow or treat. One of the city’s trucks that distributes road treatment materials broke down.
The back-to-back winter storms delivered up to a foot of snow in the Carroll County area, and temperatures as low as 13° below zero. By Monday, Feb. 22, it got back up to almost 60°, but the storms left misery in their wake with large numbers of people experiencing frozen water pipes.
A local plumbing expert estimated more than half of the county had problems with frozen pipes or well heads.
“It has been years since we have seen anything like this,” the expert said. “Plumbers are extremely busy. They are going 14 to 16 hours a day trying to get everybody hooked back up. Some normal weatherization could have helped many people quite a bit including putting some kind of heat in the well houses. A lot of people didn’t even have a heat bulb.”
Well houses and pipes can also be insulated, heat tapes can be wrapped around them, and some newer types of plumbing lines used that are less prone to breakage. Heat can be added to areas where water pipes are. But many of the houses in Eureka Springs are historic, built without insulation, and the extreme cold made it difficult to protect water pipes. The cold also froze some sewage drains.
Throughout town, many people volunteered going out in the cold weather to take water and food to those in need.
Weather observer Arthur Bruno said it was the longest period of time with the temperatures below freezing seen in our area in about 20 years. He said the storms were created when the stratosphere over the Arctic starting really warming up in January. Warming in the stratosphere is often related to cold air plunging to the South.
“The good news is it is now back to normal in the stratosphere in the Arctic,” Bruno said. “It does feel odd that we have gone from temperatures below zero to 69 degrees this week. When the jet stream is highly amplified on one side, it can be really cold. But, on the other side of the amplified pattern, it is pumping up a lot of warm air from the South. The amplified pattern can definitely result in extremes back-to-back. Soon enough it will flatten out and become more seasonable for this time of year, which is in the mid-50s in the day. Oddly, some of our warmest and wettest months have been followed by the very oppositive the next month.”