At least two killed as storms tear through Arkansas, Mississippi

Reuters: At least two people were killed as wild storms and suspected tornadoes tore through parts of Mississippi and Arkansas on Saturday, injuring several others, damaging homes and sweeping trucks off a highway, authorities said.

Two adults died when the car they were driving in struck a fallen tree in the road in Jasper County, Mississippi, county coroner Randy Graham told Reuters.

Local television reports said a man was killed in Coahoma County when his mobile home blew over in high winds, but authorities could not be reached for confirmation early on Sunday.

Widespread damage from the storm system was also reported near Dermott, Arkansas, in the southeast corner of the state, where five homes were badly damaged, 15 suffered minor damage and four trucks were blown off a highway, said National Weather Service meteorologist David Cox in Jackson, Mississippi. Two people were injured, he said….

FEMA photo of damage from a 2001 tornado near the Arkansas-Mississippi border

Farm aid diminishes Arkansas Delta farmers' adaptation to weather change

Alan Bjerga in the Commercial Appeal (Memphis) via Bloomberg: ...Drought helped drive the cost of crop insurance to a record $17.2 billion last year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported. But there is little effort by authorities to persuade farmers to dial back on crops in an era when weather extremes are more apparent.

“We have given farmers incentives to take on more risk rather than give them an incentive to create a permanent solution,” said Vincent Smith, a professor of agricultural economics at Montana State University in Bozeman. “You want to move toward programs that allow them to alleviate problems before the fact.”

USDA subsidies encouraging farmers to ignore addressing extreme weather are harder to justify, Smith and other analysts insist, when automatic budget cuts remove 5 percent from most U.S. programs and lawmakers prepare to craft a new five-year farm law.

Disaster declarations by the USDA have become commonplace over the past decade, as farmers face the disruption of traditional growing seasons. Each of the Arkansas Delta’s 26 counties has received a primary disaster designation in at least eight of the past 10 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Every one of the state’s 75 counties has been declared a primary disaster area by U.S. officials in at least six of the past 10 years, meaning that at least 30 percent of a single crop has failed....

This is a locator map showing the Arkansas Delta in Arkansas. The Arkansas Delta is not a well-defined region, so this map shows universally-accepted delta counties in solid red, and counties sometimes reffered to as delta counties or partial delta counties in lighter red. Brandonrush created this image, using the original from David Benbennick. For more information, see Commons:United States county locator maps.

Search for Arkansas flood victims goes from frantic to grim

Andrew Demillo and Chuck Bartels in the Associated Press: The search for nearly two dozen people who disappeared after flash floods swept through a popular campground went from desperate to grim on Saturday, after teams that scoured miles of river and rugged wilderness found just two bodies.

…Police haven't said when they would call off the search efforts, and crews were expected to break once night fell and to resume at daybreak Sunday.

Authorities initially feared there were many more people unaccounted for. A register that would have showed who was staying at the campground was washed away in the flood, and a call center fielded inquiries about 73 people who hadn't been accounted for as of Friday night.

…Floodwaters rose as swiftly as 8 feet per hour, poring through the remote valley with such force that it peeled asphalt from roads and bark off trees. Cabins dotting the river banks were severely damaged, and mobile homes lay on their sides. Forecasters had warned of the approaching danger in the area during the night, but campers could easily have missed those advisories because the area is isolated….

A blank Arkansas highway shield