With tropical systems lashing coastlines this week, will Beaufort County be at risk?
For nearly three months, Beaufort County has sailed through hurricane season.
And as Tropical Storm Franklin brews in the Atlantic and could strengthen into a hurricane this weekend, according to the National Hurricane Center, the county will again be out of dodge.
If it’s up to Meteorologist Brittany MacNamara and the rest of the Lowcountry, we should all cross our fingers that it stays that way.
In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted there would be 12 to 17 named storms this year, and on Aug. 10, NOAA upped its estimate to 14 to 21.
Tropical Storm Hilary, the first tropical storm to crash into Southern California in 84 years, sent record-breaking flooding onto roads and caused mud and rock slides on Sunday. Tropical Storm Harold, which was the first storm of the Atlantic hurricane season to make landfall, pounded southern Texas with heavy rains and whipping winds on Tuesday.
Franklin battered the Dominican Republic as a tropical storm Wednesday. It damaged homes and roads, left one man dead, and rendered hundreds of thousands without power and over a million without potable water, according to The New York Times. Now, about 215 miles east north-east of Grand Turk Island, Franklin is expected to move northward across the western Atlantic through early next week.
As it stood Friday morning, Franklin’s path meant very little for Beaufort County. Mostly, more of the same summer weather patterns but “nothing uncommon,” said MacNamara, with the National Weather Service’s Charleston Office.
Saturday will be blistering hot, in the upper 90s and cooler near the ocean. The hazardous heat, with humidity making it feel about 110 degrees, could prompt a heat advisory.
Temperatures on Sunday will dip a bit lower. MacNamara added that it would be low enough to get out of the threat of an advisory. Isolated storms could blow through the county, according to the NWS, with a chance for thunderstorms after 2 p.m.
While Franklin isn’t expected to upend the Lowcountry with heavy floodwaters and lashing winds, longer period swell waves caused by the storm could elevate the risk of rip currents, MacNamara said.
Franklin’s distance doesn’t mean outlying beaches, and those who swim at them, are Scot-free from impact.
“Never assume that the ocean is safe even if the weather is nice,” the National Weather Service Charleston Office warned on social media. “Hurricanes that are far away can still create deadly rip currents and waves.”
Rip currents are forceful currents of water moving away from the shore and can whisk away even the strongest of swimmers. If caught in a rip current, relax, don’t swim against it, swim out of the current and then onto shore. If a person can’t escape, float or tread water and wave for help.
This story was originally published August 25, 2023 at 11:08 AM.
