NWS: Unusually warm weather expected to bring storms today

The National Weather Service's Little Rock forecast office said Friday that new record high temperatures were being set across the state, and to expect storms today.

It was a balmy 68.9 degrees as of 2:50 p.m. Friday, according to a thermometer at Conway's Cantrell Field.

Temperatures early last week in Faulkner County were in the 20s and there was an inch of ice on the ground. Also for the record, the day-after-Christmas high temperature for Conway was set in 1942 at an even balmier 72 degrees.

The record high for North Little Rock did fall today, when a thermometer at the North Little Rock airport registered 70 degrees, bettering the previous record by six degrees.

Faulkner County residents may have thought about cracking open the T-shirt and shorts drawer Friday afternoon and maybe giving the car a wash, but the false spring will have its consequences today, according to National Weather Service warning coordination meteorologist John Robinson.

The warm, humid weather came from the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Weather Service, and somewhere over northwest Arkansas late Friday night the huge mass of warm, moisture-laden air headed north and collided with a cold front coming from the Great Plains.

The resulting storms should sweep rapidly through the state today, Robinson said, with damaging winds being the main concern but isolated tornados also a possibility. Faulkner County can expect to see the worst of it by late morning or early afternoon.

Wind gusts of 30 to 40 miles per hour will exist at ground level, Robinson said, and where the two fronts meet there will be "very strong winds aloft."

If these higher-altitude winds are forced downward and begin interacting with ground-level winds, the result could be isolated gusts National Weather Service meteorologist Amie Browne estimated at 70 to 80 miles per hour.

Damaging straight-line winds made their appearance at the start of 2008 as well, when a windstorm swept across the state on Jan. 29. With a clear blue sky overhead, winds tore shingles off roofs and felled trees throughout the county, causing many power outages and blocked roads. One gust of 61 miles per hour was recorded at the Jacksonville Air Force Base.

The January windstorm also claimed one life when a tree fell directly onto a Nissan driving along Highway 285, killing 35-year-old driver Tera Hamilton of Clinton in her car.

Robinson urged all Arkansas residents to react quickly to severe thunderstorm or tornado warnings today, as storm fronts will be moving at up to 60 miles per hour. The storms aren't likely to bring winter weather, Robinson said, with temperatures expected to fall only into the 50s by Sunday.

(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)