LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Our four-day ice storm is beginning to wrap up across Arkansas and there are dozens of ice/sleet reports from across the state.

From the map above, most of the sleet reports are from the northern half of the state and most of the ice reports are from southern Arkansas.

This happened because temperatures in northern Arkansas were colder. Sleet occurs when the temperature near the surface is cold enough to freeze the raindrops completely into ice pellets. In the southern half of the state, the coldest air was directly at the surface so the raindrops couldn’t freeze until they made contact with the ground.

Below is a visual explanation of how snow, sleet, freezing rain (ice), and rain form.

The below-freezing layer of air was thicker over northern Arkansas and that’s why they saw mainly sleet.

The highest sleet total came out of Mountain Home. Central Arkansas saw sleet too, but not as much. Vilonia only recorded one-tenth of an inch.

The opposite occurred for ice accumulations. The highest ice totals fell in central/southern Arkansas. Nearly a half-inch fell in these areas.

In the areas that saw over 0.25″ of ice, there were widespread power outages. At one point Thursday there were more than 80,000 customers with no power. Most of them were in southern Arkansas. Drew County was hit the hardest, at one point 90% of the county was without power.

Ice is impactful and dangerous, but we have also seen many beautiful photos from across the state.

If you are tired of the ice and cold, warmer weather is on the way!

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The Arkansas Storm Team is a collaboration of two stations to bring you the largest weather team in the state when covering Arkansas weather.