Break in heavy rain allows flooding to subside in Charleston

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Charleston, South Carolina, on the afternoon of Aug. 6 as much of the morning's severe flooding got a chance to drain.

Transcript

00:00And our team coverage begins this afternoon with AccuWeather meteorologist and storm chaser Tony Laubach.

00:05And Tony, this has been a storm that has been with us for a few days, and we have a long ways to go before we say goodbye to this.

00:13Flash flooding has been a huge problem, so how are things looking in Charleston right now?

00:20Well, Jeff, I'm happy to report things are looking much, much better.

00:23Now, I know you're kind of sitting there hearing me say that as I stand here in this parking lot that is filled with water.

00:29Folks, this is not nearly as bad as this was here.

00:32You see the gas station behind me, the parking lot here with a little bit of water.

00:35This was pretty much a lake a couple of hours ago, but we are kind of in a dry period here in Charleston,

00:42and that has allowed for a lot of the flooding that has been around here to subside despite several highways still remaining closed.

00:48Highway 17 near downtown, one of those that is closed right now.

00:51Police still have that barricaded off.

00:53But we've seen this in a lot of the neighborhoods here.

00:55We'll show you some video out of one of the neighborhoods we were in.

00:57You saw us do this live here from earlier.

01:00A lot of these neighborhoods, some of them pretty frequent in terms of the flooding,

01:03just dealing with a lot of the inconveniences right now.

01:07And I'm happy to use that word because it could be much worse.

01:10We could be talking catastrophic level.

01:12We could be talking extremely dangerous, deadly flooding up here.

01:15But it has just been minor inconveniences, and we've talked to a lot of residents about that that have shared that sentiment.

01:22This whole area, it's like a bowl.

01:24This is just the bottom of the bowl right here.

01:27So it's the last place to drain.

01:30I have to go out and clean.

01:31I already cleaned.

01:32I went three or three this morning.

01:33I was out here cleaning the gutters out because the water actually went down.

01:36I did this last night.

01:38I got up to right about the sidewalk here.

01:44So that has been basically the common thread.

01:46Again, still dealing with some minor flooding.

01:48You see some of it here again in the parking lot behind me.

01:50A lot of the cars have moved into the higher areas of the parking lot.

01:53So right now, more nuisance-type flooding than anything else.

01:57I do want to make a note because I'm very, very, like, crazy about this stuff.

02:01There is a picture making around on social media of I-95 near what I believe is Ridgeway or Ridgetown or something there,

02:08just north of Savannah that has, like, all sorts of cars in deep water.

02:13Folks, we were there two hours ago.

02:15There was nothing near that.

02:16We did have some closures in the area.

02:18But there are old pictures making the rounds from Florence and some other big tropical systems that rolled through here.

02:25We have not seen anything nearly that dramatic.

02:28So be careful what you see on social media here.

02:30If it's not coming from me directly or one of our friendly folks at the AccuWeather Network here,

02:35you know, take it with a grain of salt.

02:37But, yes, Jeff, Brie, got a little bit of water here we're still dealing with.

02:41Hopefully, this dry period allows this all to reset, and we can move on.

02:46All right, Tony.

02:47That's good intel there on the social media nonsense that sometimes does present itself with, again,

02:53people looking for likes and shares with no regard to integrity.

02:58Here we have some ongoing rounds of rain,

03:00and that onshore wind is just continuing to bring in the storm surge.

03:04It's piling up the seawater and sending it inland as well.

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