Christmas decorations fly as 55 mph wind gusts rip through area; power nearly restored Friday morning

Christmas decorations were flying Thursday evening as a strong cold front with high winds slammed into the Twin Lakes area leading to wide spread power outages.

As of 5 Friday morning most power had been restored area wide with approximately 400 still awaiting restoration. At the height of the outages –  between 8 and midnight –  nearly 7,500 residents lost power Thursday evening with large facilities such as Baxter Health depending on backup generation for a period of time.

The National Weather Service recorded wind gusts of 55 miles at the Marion County Airport with gusts of 40 miles recorded at the Baxter County Airport in Midway. Those gusts led to reports of trees down by Directors of Office of Emergency Management from both counties. High winds were attributed to the widespread outages with reports of transmission lines down in various locations in Baxter County.

Temperatures also took a dramatic shift as cold air from the air slammed into the area. At 6 p.m. Thursday temperature readings were in the upper 50s after a warm day that had seen rain in the afternoon. Two hours later readings were near 30 degrees with a wind chill down to 20 degrees.

Friday’s forecast looks to be calm and sunny with highs near 51 degrees. Early northwest winds will turn to the southeast in the afternoon ushering an extended period of above average temperatures heading into the Christmas holiday.

Here are power outage estimates as of early Friday morning:

For North Arkansas Electric Cooperative members without power total 41 originating in Izard County.

For Entergy Arkansas in Baxter County 33 without power, Marion County at 195, Boone County at 6, and Izard County at 66 total outages.

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