Entergy Arkansas Inc. said Wednesday it expects to have power completely restored to customers who lost service during Tuesday's severe weather at or before 10 p.m. today.
As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, there were still around 1,131 customers in the Hot Springs-Garland County area without power, down from a peak of just over 6,000 customer outages on Tuesday, said J. Paul Brewster, Entergy's manager of customer service.
Damage assessments identified 64 broken poles, 68 spans of downed wire, 16 spans requiring "significant vegetation debris removal" and multiple damaged transformers, cross arms and other infrastructure components, Brewster said in an email.
Entergy's initial assessment found 40 broken poles and multiple spans of wire down, while the assessments continued into the day.
Meteorologist Travis Shelton with the National Weather Service in Little Rock told The Sentinel-Record that Hot Springs Memorial Field recorded wind gusts of 71 mph at 1:47 a.m. Tuesday.
At 71 mph, the winds were just 2 mph under the speed of an F1 tornado.
Shelton said Tuesday there was "no indication of a tornado. Just a strong thunderstorm."
Entergy brought in 40 additional line crews to help with the restoration effort.
"With the assistance of the over 40 outside line crews assigned to the area, each outage case has been assigned to line personnel," Brewster said Wednesday.
"Each outage case is unique and restoration timing will depend upon the extent of the storm-related damages and the time required to make needed repairs," he said.
Based on the restoration progress so far, Brewster said "we anticipate having 85% of all customers currently without power restored by or before 10 p.m. tonight (Wednesday). All remaining customers should have services restored by or before 10 p.m. Thursday (today)."