Tropical Storm Idalia moved into South Carolina on Wednesday night after making landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast as a powerful Category 3 hurricane earlier in the day. While the storm had weakened as it moved across Florida and through Georgia, entering South Carolina with maximum sustained wind speeds of around 60 mph, it was still bringing heavy flooding to the coast of the Palmetto State.
A storm surge warning was in effect for the Savannah River, on the border of Georgia and South Carolina, up north to the South Santee River in South Carolina, the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday night.
Along South Carolina’s coast, North Myrtle Beach, Garden City, and Edisto Island all reported ocean water flowing over sand dunes and spilling onto beachfront streets Wednesday evening. In Charleston, storm surge from Idalia topped the seawall that protects the downtown, sending ankle-deep ocean water into the streets and neighborhoods where horse-drawn carriages pass million-dollar homes and the famous open-air market.
Emily Johnson of CBS affiliate WCSC-TV posted video of water coming over the seawall along the Battery, an area at the southern tip of the portion of Charelston that extends into the harbor.
Video posted to social media by Kathleen Culler showed two men walking through knee-deep water in what appeared to be a parking lot along the Ashley River.
Police in Isle of Palms, a small town on a barrier island to the east of Charleston, posted a video on social media showing “deep standing water” on one of the island’s major roadways.
Preliminary data showed the Wednesday evening high tide reached just over 9.2 feet, more than 3 feet above normal and the fifth-highest reading in Charleston Harbor since records were first kept in 1899.
Idalia also spawned a tornado that briefly touched down in the Charleston, South Carolina, suburb of Goose Creek, the National Weather Service said. The winds sent a car flying and flipped it over, according to authorities and eyewitness video. Two people received minor injuries.
The fast-moving storm was forecast to continue traveling up the coast of South Carolina overnight before veering into the Atlantic Ocean just offshore of the North Carolina Coast on Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center. The center predicted “little change” in the storm’s strength for the next two days.
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