The Tornado Outbreak of 2023
By RALPH HARDIN
Evening Times Editor I t was March 31, 2023 … a day the residents of Wynne will long remember. A swarm of tornadoes wrought a path of destruction across nine states in the Eastern U.S., from Arkansas and Iowa to as far east as Delaware. The storms killed more than 30 people — including five in Arkansas. One tornado hit the Pulaski County cities of Little Rock, North Little Rock, Sherwood, and Jacksonville, while another hit the eastern Arkansas community of Wynne in Cross County.
In the days leading up to the outbreak, the National Weather Service had been warning about the potential for severe storms striking the state on Friday, March 31, 2023. By the afternoon, a supercell started showing signs of becoming tornadic as it tracked from Pike County up to Saline County, even spouting a funnel cloud near Pearcy in Garland County a little after 1:15 p.m.
Soon after, the National Weather Service in Little Rock confirmed a tornado (rated a high EF3, with winds reaching 165 miles per hour) had touched down about two miles west-northwest of the intersection of Interstate 430 and Interstate 630. It proceeded in a northeasterly direction, destroying houses and damaging Fire Station No. 9 on Shackleford Road before crossing Interstate 430 and hitting the Breckinridge and Colony West shopping centers along Rodney Parham. The tornado damaged numerous buildings along Cantrell Avenue and completely destroyed the seventy-acre Reservoir Park, eventually moving into the Kingwood neighborhood near Cammack Village in Pulaski County.
Around 2 p.m., the tornado struck Murray Park before it crossed the Arkansas River and struck Burns Park in North Little Rock before hitting the Amboy and Indian Hills neighborhoods. One person died in North Little Rock. At its most powerful, the tornado was 600 yards wide. The storm left half of Sherwood without power before cutting a three-mile path through Jacksonville. The system eventually weakened around the southern Cabot (Lonoke County) area, dissipating just before 3 p.m. The tornado had cut a swath over 34 miles long.
In Wynne, a separate tornado (also rated EF3) cut a path through the heart of the city, destroying the high school and pulling up the astroturf from the nearby football field. First United Methodist Church was destroyed, as were several businesses along the city’s main thoroughfare (including the offices of the Wynne Progress newspaper) and numerous other houses and structures.
Four people died in the storm. The tornado was determined to have set down about nine miles southwest of the city; it was initially an EF2 but intensified as it headed toward Wynne, becoming an EF3. The tornado later crossed the Mississippi River and dissipated in Tennessee, leaving a track of seventy-three miles. At its most powerful, the tornado was 1,600 yards (nearly a mile) wide and reached wind speeds of 150 miles per hour.
Other reports of possible tornadoes were received from Stone County and Prairie County.
In the aftermath, approximately 75,000 people in Arkansas were without power, 50,000 of them in Pulaski County. Governor Sarah Sanders declared a state of emergency and activated the Arkansas National Guard to assist with clearing roads. The next day, Sanders and Little Rock mayor Frank Scott surveyed some of the hardest-hit areas in the capital city. On April 2, President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for the state, and Sanders, along with Education Secretary Jacob Olivia, and Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), toured Wynne.
On April 4, 2023, Sanders asked the federal government to cover the cost of all state and local recovery efforts for the first month, rather than seventy-five percent.
(Many commentators noted that Sanders, during her gubernatorial campaign, had complained about the “meddling hand” of the federal government and had vowed to resist federal influence in Arkansas.) The Biden administration approved this request. On April 6, 2023, the director of the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management stated that the tornadoes had destroyed 120 homes in Arkansas and damaged approximately 1,700 more. Two weeks after the tornadoes, FEMA had approved more than $4 million in aid for approximately 5,800 state residents affected.
Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders surveys tornado damage at Wynne High School on, April 2, 2023.
Photo by Randall Lee
The National Weather Service tracked both deadly tornadoes across Arkansas on the afternoon of March 31, 2023.
Image courtesy of NWS
