Storm damage: A possible tornado. What else did Elsa do to northern Beaufort County?
Thousands of people were without power and surveying tree damage on Thursday morning after Tropical Storm Elsa crossed Beaufort County and spawned a possible tornado in Port Royal.
Damage was mostly north of the Broad River, where some major roads were blocked and police were detouring traffic. Beaufort appeared to have skirted much damage, while downtown Port Royal bore the brunt of the storm.
Noah Krepps, Port Royal’s planning director, was among the town’s employees walking the streets adjacent to Paris Avenue, counting the number of homes and businesses damaged by falling trees and limbs. A significant number have been damaged, he said.
Town officials suspect that a tornado cut a narrow swath, centered along Paris Avenue, from the waterfront to Ribaut Road, but the evidence is only anecdotal, Krepps said.
Jonathan Lamb, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, said that the NWS has not yet confirmed whether there was a tornado in Port Royal, but that is likely what caused the damage. Surveyors will be sent to the area to make an official determination, but official confirmation won’t come out until Friday at the latest, Lamb said.
Neal Pugliese, a stormwater consultant for the city of Beaufort, said some rain gauges in the flood-prone Mossy Oaks neighborhood of the city recorded more than 7 inches of rain. A new $6.5 million storm drain improvement project, completed in April, handled the deluge, and no homes were flooded.
“That’s an absolute enormous amount of water that was processed,” Pugliese said.
Kathleen Williams, a spokesperson for the City of Beaufort, said there was no serious flooding in the city. Trees and limbs were blown, but overall, the damage was minor.
But at least a dozen large trees came down on homes and businesses in the downtown area of Port Royal, Town Manager Van Willis said on Paris Avenue Thursday morning.
Power still was out in that area as of 10 a.m. A large tree and a power pole were stretched across Paris Avenue, the town’s main street, as residents and town officials surveyed the damage.
Trees rested on roofs and vehicles.
“It went from nothin’ to somethin,’” Jrameta Brown, who lives on 16th Street and Paris Avenue, said of the pounding rain, high wind, thunder and “horrible lightning.”
She lost power at her duplex at 1:15 a.m. and still was without electricity at 8 a.m.
Willis suspects a tornado.
“It appears something significant touched down on that end of Paris Avenue,” Willis said.
Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office said in an alert that Paris Avenue from Ribaut Road to the Port Royal Town Hall was temporarily blocked because of downed power lines as of 8:41 a.m., with Dominion Energy crews on the scene. Traffic lights at Savannah Highway and S.C. 170 weren’t working, causing bumper-to-bumper traffic detouring on Grober Hill Road.
Paul Fischer, a spokesperson for Dominion Energy in Charleston, said that there were 30,000 customers scattered throughout South Carolina who were without power at around 5:30 a.m. Thursday.
“We’ve worked since midnight to restore power to approximately 26,000 customers, and there are approximately 5,000 customers without power,” Fischer said. “And while that progress may sound good, we understand if you’re a customer without power, it doesn’t mean a lot.”
About 2,100 customers were without power in Beaufort and Bluffton, Fischer said.
As of around 7:30 a.m., Palmetto Electric reported 18 outages, and Dominion Energy reported 89 incidents that caused outages affecting 4,005 customers.
“We’ll continue working throughout the day until every customer’s power is turned back on,” Fischer said. “There may be some areas that take a little bit longer than others where the damage was more significant and we will continue to work those as well.”
North of the Broad, residents woke up to “standing water, power lines down, power off, traffic lights out and trees and debris on the roadways and on homes/businesses,” the Beaufort and Port Royal Fire Departments wrote in a Facebook post.
Just before 6 a.m., portions of Pigeon Point Road, Paris Avenue and Savannah Highway near the Parc at Broad River and Legends North of the Broad were blocked, according to the Beaufort and Port Royal Fire Departments.
In Burton, the fire department reported “only a handful of storm related calls with minor damage and, thankfully, no injuries” in a Facebook post.
Several homes on Lady’s Island and Coosaw Island lost power after the storm knocked down wires, but there was no major damage, according to Lady’s Island / St. Helena Fire District spokesperson Scott Harris. Dominion is “aware and is restoring the power,” shortly, he said.
The highest rainfall amount was in Beaufort measuring 5 to 7 inches of rain, according to Jonathan Lamb, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Charleston.
The center of Tropical Storm Elsa made its way into South Carolina around 5 a.m. Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Center. As of 8 a.m., Tropical Storm Elsa was 45 miles west of Florence, South Carolina, moving northeast at 18 mph with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
The storm is projected to continue moving over central South Carolina throughout the morning and will make its way into North Carolina by Thursday afternoon.
Beaufort County can expect isolated showers and breezes in the morning for the rest of Thursday, Lamb said.
“We do still have a high risk of rip currents today at the beaches,” Lamb said.
Beaufort County School District announced Thursday morning that schools would be closed all day due to road closures and power outages.
This story was originally published July 8, 2021 at 8:51 AM.
