Thunderstorm Wind — Little River, Arkansas

2023-08-27 · near Ashdown, Little River, Arkansas

Event narrative

A large tree was blown down near Stone and Buck Wright Road just north of Ashdown, as relayed by broadcast media.

Wider weather episode

Thunderstorms were observed developing along a nearly stalled frontal boundary and remnant outflows across parts of Southwest Arkansas, Northeast Texas, and Northern Louisiana on the afternoon of August 27th. Very strong diurnal heating was sufficient to erode a capping inversion aloft with around 1500-2000 J/kg of mean-layer instability supporting occasional stronger updrafts. Deep-layer vertical shear across much of the region was weak at generally less than 10-15 knots. This was still enough to support multi-cellular, pulse convection as the primary storm mode. Weak surface flow was also insufficient to support much cold pool propagation. Therefore, the primary severe risk was tied to individual pulse downdrafts as thunderstorms collapsed. This resulted in numerous damaging wind reports across parts of the region, including one isolated report in Little River County.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (33.7000, -94.1300)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1137050. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.