PRAIRIE AND SALINE COUNTIES, Ark. (KATV) — Storms battered most of the state Wednesday afternoon. A landspout touched down in Des Arc, and heavy winds uprooted trees in Saline County.
Susan Marak, her husband, and their eight dogs and cat are thankful for no injuries and minimal damage to their home after a tree landed on it Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s not as bad as I thought. It could be a lot worse. I’m thankful,” Marak said.
Heavy wind knocked over several trees along Congo Ferndale Rd., where the Maraks live. Some of those trees, landing on power lines and temporarily putting the neighborhood in the dark.
The Maraks tell KATV they’ve made a point of trimming and removing excess tree limbs for several years. They believe the damage could have been much worse had they not removed all that excess weight from the trees.
Marak and her husband have lived in their home for 20 years, but they say this isn’t the first time they’ve been victims of Mother Nature’s fury: “We got hit by lightning one time and had a fire in the kitchen, a few years ago.”
While these storms can be incredibly dangerous, we always seem to be awed by them. Kimberly Parchman caught video of a landspout making touchdown in Des Arc Wednesday afternoon.
“It’s cool. I’m just videoing the whole thing and it just kept coming closer and closer. Then it got almost to one of my bean fields and that’s whenever all the dust started circling around and then the whole thing started fizzling out. That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” Parchman exclaimed.
So far, KATV has not heard of any reported injuries from Wednesday’s storms.
by Stephanie Bennett (2018, June 13) KATV
