‘We got lucky this time’: Beaufort Co. prepared for Ian’s worst, but was spared its impacts

Beaufort County communities prepared for a hurricane but, in the end, Ian sidestepped the Lowcountry, saving the worst for cities just up the coast including Georgetown, Myrtle Beach and Charleston.

“It’s a bit of a mess up here today,” Peter Mohlin, a Charleston-based National Weather Service meteorologist, said Saturday morning. “You guys kind of lucked out.”

Hurricane Ian made landfall at 2:05 p.m. Friday near Georgetown, 130 miles northeast of Beaufort, with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph, according to the Weather Service. Gusts of 92 and 85 also were reported in Charleston, based on preliminary data that’s still being collected in the wake of the storm.

By comparison, some of the strongest winds in Beaufort County were 58 mph off Fripp Island and 49 mph in Beaufort.

“It was a pretty sharp cut off,” said Mohlin, noting “most of the weather” was closer to the center of the hurricane.

Most of the Charleston area saw 4-8 inches of rain, with a high report of 11 inches.

In Beaufort County, totals ranged from an inch to an inch-and-a-half, the Weather Service said.

James Duffy, the owner of Duffy’s, an art, antiques and collectibles shop on Bay Street in Beaufort, put down a few sandbags at his front and back doors but “I was just gambling mostly,” Duffy said of his hurricane preparations. “I think next time I might not gamble as much. We got lucky this time.”

On Saturday morning in Beaufort, the sun was out and businesses on Bay Street were reopening for business in the wake of a storm that did not fully materialize.

On Friday morning, 24 hours earlier, as Ian advanced on South Carolina, Bay Street was a ghost town. Boards covered windows and sandbags blocked door bottoms.

Beaufort Mayor Stephen Murray said he was pleased with the preparations for the storm, even if it did not show up as predicted. Although the area was fortunate that Ian’s track changed, Murray said, the storm served as a good drill to test hurricane plans.

Beaufort County’s Port Royal had 1.51 inches and Hilton Head Island, 1.48. Jasper County’s Ridgeland had 1.5 inches.

Storm surge did not materialize

Beaufort County also got lucky when it came to storm surge.

Storm surge at Myrtle Beach was over 6 feet Friday afternoon, Mohlin said, and it came closer to high tide.

Storm surge at Fort Pulaski tide gauge in Savannah, the closest tide gauge to Beaufort County, showed a main surge of 3.85 feet, but it occurred during low tide just prior to daybreak. Had it come during high tide, Mohlin said, “that would have been much more problematic.”

The system first made landfall in the United States north of Fort Myers, Florida, as a Category 4 hurricane. Ian was downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved across land. When it reemerged over the Atlantic near Cape Canaveral, however, it picked up steam as it moved toward South Carolina. It looked like Beaufort County would be hit with a low-level hurricane.

But unlike 2016’s Hurricane Matthew, the last hurricane to make landfall in the state, the Weather Service’s Mohlin said, Ian did not hug the coastline, taking a more eastward track that reduced the threat of coastal flooding for Beaufort County.

Communities up the coast were not so lucky.

Four piers in the Grand Strand, the 60-mile stretch that includes Murrells Inlet, Surfside Beach, Garden City, North Myrtle Beach and Myrtle Beach, partially collapsed as a result of storm surges and wind from Hurricane Ian, the Sun News in Myrtle Beach reported.

Significant flooding was reported in the Cherry Grove area of North Myrtle Beach.

In Garden City, water rushed over the dunes and into the streets, the Post and Courier in Charleston reported.

Knee-deep waters inundated what were once roads in Charleston, but storm surge did not overwhelm the city, the newspaper reported.

In Beaufort County, there were no reports of flooding as of 2 p.m. Friday, said Major Angela Viens, a spokeswoman for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.

“I’m very happy the way our community responded because it was not looking good for a while,” Viens said. “They were compliant and diligent in their actions that they took. We were lucky that it didn’t happen but I think our community was ready for it.”

Beaufort County’s emergency management center had 39 storm-related calls, said Viens, including four reports of traffic lights out, six reports of power lines down, and 29 reports of trees down or branches in roads.

Dominion Energy reported 14,000 customers still without power, most of them in Charleston County, as of Saturday morning. In Beaufort County, where there were 1,500 to 3,000 without power at various times during the storm, there were only one or two without power Saturday, said Paul Fischer, a Dominion spokesman.