Entries - Entry Category: Natural Disasters

Thirty-five people were killed and most of the town of Brinkley (Monroe County) was destroyed by a March 8, 1909, tornado, one of a series that caused a total of fifty-eight fatalities along with damage in at least nine Arkansas counties. The tornado roared into Brinkley at 7:07 p.m. on March 8, 1909, and it was reported that wind that sounded like an explosion of dynamite scraped through the town, “as with a billion hands wrenched, tore and struck down, with hideous wails and terrible crunches.” It destroyed and damaged residential and commercial buildings, with the Brauda Dry Goods Company being the sole store in town that was untouched. St. John the Baptist Catholic Church was the only Brinkley church …

In the early morning hours of Sunday, May 26, 2024, during Memorial Day weekend, multiple tornadoes struck northwestern and north-central Arkansas, killing (either directly or indirectly) ten people in the state across four counties: Benton, Marion, Boone, and Baxter. Several smaller tornadoes struck across northern Arkansas. The National Weather Service eventually tallied seventeen tornadoes occurring in the state on this one day. It was the deadliest tornado outbreak to hit the state since storms struck Mayflower (Faulkner County) and Vilonia (Faulkner County) in April 2014, killing sixteen. May 2024 had witnessed a particularly active tornado season across the United States, with fatal twisters causing extensive damage across the Midwest and the South. The tornadoes that struck Arkansas were part of …