Winds blowing boats, trucks around on SC coast. Power out. And it’s going to get cold
High winds upward of 50 and 60 miles an hour rattled windows, overturned vehicles, blew shrimp boats off the docks and knocked out power in scattered areas across the South Carolina coast Saturday.
And get ready for a sizable temperature drop, as it could be below freezing by Sunday morning.
At 3 p.m. Saturday, a Dominion Energy outage map showed power outages for 538 customers in the Attaway area north of Beaufort, 305 customers on St. Helena Island, 237 in the Beaufort-Port Royal area and 66 in Bluffton.
Dominion Spokesman Paul Fischer said, and 3,200 across its entire South Carolina service territory, with a large concentration in Charleston County.
“The primary reasons for outages include damage from severe winds, downed trees and tree limbs,” Fischer said.
Palmetto Electric Cooperative also said windy conditions throughout its service area in Hampton and Jasper counties were causing scattered outages.
A 64 mph gust hit Fort Sumter located in Charleston Harbor, the highest wind recording Saturday, according to the National Weather Service in Charleston.
Numerous gusts in the 40s, 50s and 60s were reported across the Lowcountry Saturday, including a 51 mph blast at the Fripp Island nearshore buoy and a 50 mph blow in Beaufort.
A wind advisory remains in effect until 6 p.m.
“It’s not like an everyday thing, but if we get a strong cold front that comes through it can happen,” Rebecca Davidson, a Weather Service meteorologist, said of the high winds.
Wind blew a container from a tractor-trailer on the Don Holt Bridge in Charleston, crushing one side of a police car, Davidson said. And two small planes parked at Charleston International Airport were toppled, too, she said.
In Beaufort County, wind snapped pilings and blew the shrimp boats Gracie Belle, Lady Victoria and Miss Leshia off the dock at Village Creek on St. Helena Island.
“Definitely there was some strong activity when that front was pushing through,” said Craig Reeves of Sea Eagle Market, who owns the three shrimp boats. “We’ve rode out hurricanes down there and not had this dolphin break. I feel like we had some kind of gust.”
A dolphin is made up of more than one piling.
Reeves said winds were blowing 50 to 60 mph.
Captains and crew members were called to corral the boats, said Reeves, adding that damage was minimal.
The wind moved in early Saturday with a cold front, Davidson said. A freeze warning is effect Saturday night and Sunday morning. Temperatures could dip into the upper 20s and low 30s on the coast and to the mid-20s inland. At 1:30 p.m., it was 55 degrees in Beaufort.
This story was originally published March 12, 2022 at 2:28 PM.
