Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

TOP NEWS of 2000 - January Snow Storm

Weather topped the news to start 2000 with a record snowfall, and ended the year with early bitterly cold temperatures making it a top story.

January started off dry, as little rain fell, but ended in a much different manner.

Snow began falling Wednesday, Jan. 26 and continued through Thursday, Jan. 27, until nearly 16 inches accumulated in some places.

This created confusion throughout the county as Nevada County wasn't prepared for the vast amount of snow received.

The snow destroyed barns and chicken houses, damaged roofs and left quite a few motorists stranded for two or three days until the roads were clear enough for travel again.

Volunteers came out to help those stranded on Interstate-30, making sure the motorists had somewhere warm to wait until they could get back on the road once more.

In all, some 100 people were sheltered in Prescott churches, including one member of the National Football League.

However, when emergency personnel made sure the public was reasonably safe, they turned their attention to the damage done by the blizzard.

Amazingly, there were no power outages because of the storm. Otherwise, Nevada County Office of Emergency Services Coordinator Jim Cross said, there could have been severe problems.

Snow remained on the ground more than a week, causing the losses to mount for business, industry and farming.

Initial estimates showed the damage to be around $25 million for the poultry industry, as more than 20 chicken houses were destroyed by the snow in Nevada County alone.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee declared Nevada County a disaster area and applied for federal assistance as south Arkansas was the part of the state hardest hit by the snow storm.

Officially, only 9.25 inches of snow fell in Prescott, according to local meteorologist John W. Teeter.

However, Cale weatherman Davis Benton said the south part of the county received 12.5 inches of the white stuff.

County schools were forced to close for the duration as buses were unable to run their routes and pick children up.

When all was said and done, more than 80 buildings throughout the county were damaged, with the damage estimates more than $5 million.

Once the snow melted, the weather changed and nothing much fell from the skies.

Two month into the year and the region was already below normal in rainfall.

This, though, changed in May as 7.62 inches of rain fell. While this helped, it didn't bring the area to normal in rain.

In fact, the area was still almost three inches below normal for the year in May.

June was also a wet month, but the last to be so for the entire summer.

Summer 2000 was one of the driest on record as temperatures hovered around the 100 degree mark and heat warnings were posted.

The drought resulted in burn bans being imposed county-wide until October.

However, this didn't help much as fire destroyed 225 acres on Aug. 30 as the region was a tinderbox because of the lack of rain.

Nevada County firefighters had to fight fires on two fronts as one fire began on Highway 24 East near the Upchurch Community, and another began at the 51 mile-marker on Interstate-30.

As summer turned to fall, rain fell more frequently, especially during November, as more than 11 inches was recorded in Prescott by Teeter, making it the wettest month of the year.

This also put the county above normal in rainfall for the year at the time.

December brought with it more rain and colder weather.

In fact, winter made an early appearance as two-inches of freezing rain and sleet were dumped on the county Dec. 13.

While the wintry mix didn't affect county and state roads, other than trees being felled by the weight of the ice, it did paralyze the region by knocking out electricity.

The ice forming on power lines, and trees falling across them knocked out electric service to the southern part of the county for the better part of a week, and closed county schools.

Rosston was especially hard hit by the storm as the city was unable to provide its residents with water.

Rosston Mayor Lewis Jackson said the city's generator malfunctioned, causing the city to have to borrow one from Prescott so the water tanks could be filled.

As the year drew to a close, meteorologists were calling for bitterly cold temperatures and possibly more freezing rain, sleet and possibly snow.