Charleston Co. Council votes to rescind State of Emergency declaration

CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCBD) – The Charleston County Council vote was unanimous to rescind the State of Emergency declaration implemented before Hurricane Ian, and a National Weather Service meteorologist spoke with News 2 about Ian’s impact on the Lowcountry.

Meteorologist Bob Bright says most of Ian’s damage was caused by its tropical storm force winds.

“We had some trees,” Bright said, “some powerlines down across the Charleston Tri-County area. We had some power outages as well, as a result of the downed powerlines.”

Bright says the persistent rain brought by Ian also caused significant flooding in certain areas.

“We had reports of around four to ten inches of some locally higher amounts across the Tri-County area,” he said.

He says although storm conditions were relatively mild here in the Lowcountry, the category one storm was still a danger to neighbors.

“We did have one report of a tree that fell onto a house and caused an injury in Hanahan,” Bright said.

However, Bright says conditions could have been way worst for the Lowcountry if Ian hit Charleston head-on.

“If you saw the flooding up the road a little bit toward Georgetown and Myrtle Beach,” he said, “they definitely took the brunt of it, especially the coastal flooding from the storm surge.”

He says fortunately, the storm’s track shifted, and much of the severe weather we could’ve experienced missed our area.

“Due to the nature of the storm and the fact that it tracked just off-shore and made landfall just North of Charleston,” Bright said, “we got lucky.”

Bright also says most of Ian’s storm surge was to the north in the Grand Strand area.