Hurricane Irma makes 83-year-old retired farmer on St. Helena Island a ‘go-to’ weatherman

Sonny Bishop is no meteorologist.

So why does the 83-year-old retired farmer of St. Helena Island get this message on Facebook as Hurricane Irma churns this way:

“Sonny, you’re my go-to hurricane man. Calm and level heads are needed for the next few days.”

Bishop puts out his prognostications — actually, his acute observations — on a desktop computer overlooking the marsh on the old home place. It resonates as a voice of reason in a broiling sea of screaming heads.

Here’s what he pecked out Thursday morning:

“Based on the 5 a.m. National Hurricane Center forecast today, my view is it will be a Hurricane Matthew rerun on Monday afternoon and night. Matthew was a Category 1 when it went close by last year and they are forecasting (Irma) downgrading to a Cat 1 when it gets close to us, so we can expect 75 to 100 mph winds Monday. The wide cone shows a range of land falls, but bottom line is still gales on Monday. With a high tide at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m., we should expect about the same surge of 13 feet as Matthew, or about 4 feet above a normal high tide.”

He said the storm should be moving quickly, leaving 3 to 4 inches of rain.

That can change. But for today, it sounds more measured than an official announcement Wednesday that Hurricane Irma would be the greatest storm in these parts in 100 years.

“That’s not true,” Bishop told me the next morning. “It’s the greatest storm in the tropics, but that’s a long way from here.”

Bishop was physically shaken by this county’s storm of the century. He was back home in Frogmore with new Clemson University degrees in chemistry and horticulture when Hurricane Gracie hit. The Category 4 storm thankfully blew in at low tide on a date still etched like steel in Bishop’s mind: “9-29-59.”

It leveled his family’s 20,000-square-foot packing shed on Yard Farm, where he and his wife, Mary, still live — and where they plan to ride out Hurricane Irma just as they did Hurricane Matthew.

But Bishop stresses to those seeking his input that, while evacuation is not mandatory even when it is called mandatory, you’re on your own if you stay and it becomes a personal risk assessment that demands most people to leave.

“Mainly because all government safety services will be closed and any 911 call will be ignored out of necessity since road conditions will be dangerous and even impossible with trees and debris blocking roads as well as flooded roads and causeways,” he advised his Facebook followers Thursday.

“Bottom line, if one stays, one is on their own. If you have a medical emergency, no one can help you. People who need electricity like for oxygen are the main people who must evacuate. For most of us, it is a risk assessment. For instance, a house that has flooded before will be flooded Monday. A house with a large tree next to it would be a high risk of danger.”

Bishop told all about his white-knuckled Gracie experience in a book that he and his daughter wrote about Yard Farm, “A Place Called Home.”

Back then, the main warnings came from the late Charlie Hall, the weatherman on the only television station they could get, Channel 5 from Charleston. He got information from the National Weather Service in Charleston, and reports from ships at sea.

But as Bishop says, “Anybody who is a farmer has to follow the weather, especially hurricanes and tropical storms that can affect the crops.”

That — and curiosity — is how he started his hobby of diving deeper into the weather.

His main sources today are the National Hurricane Center and the Weather Underground “Hurricane and Tropical Cyclones” site. He posted a NOAA map Thursday showing what the climate is expected to look like next Tuesday. It indicates to Bishop that they think Hurricane Irma will come ashore close to us.

His advice to hurricane watchers is to use credible sources. He said for local information, the website of the Emergency Management Division of the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office has all the information you would need.

That, he said, and experience that tends to put monsters in perspective.

This story was originally published September 7, 2017 at 12:35 PM with the headline "Hurricane Irma makes 83-year-old retired farmer on St. Helena Island a ‘go-to’ weatherman."