stormwatch

More blogger shots: Before the storm

I just love this one, called Ernesto Rain Bands, Pre-Storm Folly Beach.

It was posted by the author of the blog the painted band-aid box, which chronicles the author's life as an emergency medical technician (and, more recently, her work in an emergency room).

This link will take you to her Ernesto Flickr stream. It's one of several remarkable images in the set, and part of a larger stream with many more images.

And now: Surfing pictures!

If you're just an average Joe or Jane resident of the Lowcountry, you'll likely remember Tropical Storm Ernesto as a kinda rainy day when the kids stayed home from school and traffic got kinda bad.

But if you're a surfer, and if you made to the Washout on Folly Beach today, you'll probably remember Ernesto as one of the greatest single days of surfing we've seen in the Lowcountry in a long, long time. We heard from several surfers today, and they were almost reverent in describing the conditions.

Photographer Grace Beahm shot these photos (among others) today, and when we saw them we just knew that the surfers out there would enjoy taking a look at some of her shots that weren't going to make the print publication cut... So here's a gallery just to remember the day... and to make those of you who didn't make it out to Folly really, really jealous...

North Charleston High School

Just heard on Channel 5 that while other schools are opening on regular schedules, North Charleston High School will be opening at 9:30.

Makes sense. That's been the main emergency shelter since 3 p.m. yesterday...

Blog pictures

Vanderhorst, Smith Street & Murphy's Court. ... the photo is by Joan Perry of the popular Charleston blog Walk This Way... and there are more like it there...

Here's Cannon Park, the neighborhood of blogger Jared W. Smith. He's got more at his blog...

Berkeley: No damage

From reporter Yvonne Wenger:

Berkeley County Emergency Preparedness Director Jason Patno said there was no reports of damage or flooding in the county.County offices will be open usual business hours Friday, including the county landfill. Berkeley County schools will also be open, Patno said.
The three county shelters began closing this evening, Patno said. About two dozen residents spent the day at shelters at Berkeley High School, Goose Creek High School and Berkeley Intermediate School.

“There was a lot of uncertainty with the forecast track,” Patno said. “We wanted to make sure we were prepared to the fullest extent possible. This shows exactly why we should be prepared.”

Evacuation over, shelters close

Here are some highlights from the last Ernesto press conference from the Charleston County Emergency Operations Center:

Leon Stavrinakis: The voluntary evacuation is over, and they're closing down the emergency Red Cross shelters...

It's not quite a complete stand-down yet. There's still a possibility of inclement weather in the northern end of the county... wind and rain... but the threat should pass in the next couple of hours.

Cathy Haynes: They've gone back to OPCON 3 after the state EOC conference call, scaling back the staff to some key people... as soon as they've fully shut down the emergency shelters they'll be able to return to the normal operating condition...

Fifty-five people stayed in the Charleston County emergency shelters...

About 900 SCEG people are without power...  Roughly 100 Berkeley Electric customers lost power ... utility crews are on the job... Only one tree went down, and it's already been removed...

All county governement offices and county courts will open tomorrow.

In response to a question about whether the storm was a good drill for local emergency officials, Haynes said: "I think it was a very good drill. Any opportunity we get to bring the key people together... improves our response and our assistance to the citizens of Charleston County."

Stavrinakis wanted to comment on that: "We didn't treat this as a drill... We would never put the public through this kind of thing as a drill."

And that's it for county EOC press conferences, ladies and gentlemen...

Closing down the 24-cycle

After 130 blog posts over the past 52 hours and multiple Charleston.net updates, we're ending our 24-hour Ernesto news cycle with this post.

We're not done blogging Ernesto, and this Storm Watch blog will continue to cover storm-related Lowcountry news long after Ernesto is gone. But I'm scaling back the intense, minute-to-minute online coverage of this story because Ernesto has moved on. It's still a serious story, but it isn't our story now.

We've been staffing this blog 19 to 20 hours a day since before 1 p.m. on Tuesday, skipping only the 2 a.m. National Hurricane Center updates. Had it been a bigger storm, we'd have staffed those too, but I think the difference between "enough" and "too much" is that enough is enough.

The P&C newsroom is still staffing Ernesto with journalists who are chasing the storm, and we'll have reports in the morning paper and on Charleston.net. We'll post here this evening until we're out of things to talk about, then start up again tomorrow and try to get a clear picture of the storm's aftermath. Your comments and participation will help us refine that picture. We'll check the local blogosphere for reaction, too.

In the meantime, there are still some great things coming up on this blog this evening -- in particular, we're working up a special treat for the surfers -- but our staffing is going to reflect the story as it is, not the story as it's hyped.

Anyway, I hope y'all enjoyed the coverage here over the last three days. Please leave us a comment and give us your feedback and suggestions. Let us know if you've got photos or story tips. And please check back later, too, if only for the surfing stuff...

-- Dan Conover

Weather Underground

Weather Underground's track map:

Ernesto 5 p.m.

Tropical Storm Ernesto is blowing 60 knots and moving north-northeast at 15 knots. It now appears headed to make landfall near Wilmington, N.C., and become extra-tropical over land. But the system will then slow down and produce heavy rains over the eastern United States.

Read the public advisory here.

See the forecast discussion here.

 

 

 

School openings

Schools reporter Diette Courrege files this:

Charleston County schools and district offices will reopen on Friday with normal schedules, except for North Charleston High School, which will open at 9:30 a.m. because that school is being used as an American Red Cross shelter. The delay means that buses providing transportation to North Charleston High School will run two hours later than their usual pick-up times.

Two other schools used as shelters – Stall High School and Alice Birney Middle School – will open at their usual times.

All schools will be dismissed at the usual times.

To get updated information, check the district hotline – (843) 937-0074.

Dorchester District 2 schools are planning to open at its regularly scheduled times. District officials encouraged parents to monitor media broadcasts should there be a change in weather conditions overnight.

Dorchester School District Four will operate on a delayed schedule Friday. Interim Superintendent Jerry Montjoy said a delay was necessary for students' safety because there are a considerable number of unpaved roads in the district. Students will report at 9 a.m. and staff members should come to work at 8 a.m.