Hey everyone...
As you've no doubt seen on the news, Charleston SC is being hit with the worst flooding since Hurricane Hugo back in 1989. The sea at high tide yesterday was over 8 ft above mean level. This allowed waves to flow over the battery sea wall! Here's what it looked like:
What makes it worse is the incredible amount of rain we've gotten. While the National Weather Service is reporting 13 inches of rain for downtown, some areas north of the downtown area have experienced more than 2 FEET of rain since Friday evening, with more on the way. Amazingly, this means that there are areas around North Charleston and Summerville that are flooded worse than the downtown peninsula!
That being said, I am very lucky. My home is on high ground in a subdivision that is close to the Ashley river, so we have very good stormwater drainage. (There is a large stormwater drainage ditch right next to my property, in fact.) So my house is dry, although my yard is going to be soupy for several days I'm sure. Still, I want to thank everyone who has called, e-mailed, texted, and PMed me recently. Rest assured that I will be just fine.
Other homeowners in my area are not so lucky. There are houses less than a mile from me that have 6-12 inches of standing water inside them. And downtown there are houses with 3 feet of water in them. Also, to the north-west from where I am they have actually had to rescue people from their homes due to flash-flooding conditions. They have 4 deaths reported so far. (!)
They are calling this a 500-year rain event! I've never experienced anything like this before, and I surely don't want to ever again... I guess the moral of the story is to check out the elevation of your property before you buy it. I actually considered other houses in this area that were lower, back when we bought our house. I'm very glad now that I opted for this one on higher ground!
And if you're thinking about a trip to Charleston, you might want to wait a while...
Adam