UPDATE: Highway 18 open; outages reported

The snow is melting off roads, bridges and overpasses in Blytheville, said Blytheville Police Chief Ross Thompson.

"The Highway 18 overpass is open again," Thompson said just before 11 a.m. Monday.

Besides the overpass leading to Walmart, the only other trouble spots were the railroad crossings, Thompson said.

"Those are about the only hills we have in town, and people were having trouble getting up them," he said.

Railroad officials were checking to see if they could do anything to help alleviate the problems at the crossings. Traffic over the tracks apparently helped clear them, Thompson said.

Several power outages were reported on the east side of town, the chief said.

"We had a couple of transformers go out," he said.

Those transformers helped provide power to the area, including the Walmart Super Center, which lost power for more than four hours, said Mark Brown, manager of the store.

"We lost power at about 10 'til 7, and it came back on about 15 minutes ago," he said at 11:30 a.m. "It did come back on for about 40 minutes in the middle, but then went out again."

Other than trying to get people out of the dark store, there were no problems, Brown said.

The weight of the wet snow and the volume of it may have also contributed to the power failures, Thompson said.

"We just had so much heavy, wet snow fall in such a short time, it brought down the power lines," he said.

The National Weather Service stated that Blytheville received between 4 and 6 inches of snow Monday morning.

Earlier today, police officers were busy trying to get motorists safely through town as Armorel and Blytheville schools dismissed classes at 9 a.m.

Gosnell Schools announced early that classes there would be canceled. Classes at several schools were canceled as well, including Arkansas Northeastern College.

There were also traffic problems because of the closed overpass and downed power lines that sent fire arcing through the air.

Deputies of the Mississippi County Sheriff's office were busy working accidents in the county, mainly "fender-benders" and cars sliding off the roadways, said Capt. Larry Williams.

The majority of the accidents were on Highway 18 and Interstate 55, he said.

No injuries were reported.

For a gallery of images from today's snowstorm, click here.

dhilton@blythevillecourier.com