By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The National Weather Service (NWS) in Charleston confirmed on Wednesday that a tornado touched down on Lady’s Island just before 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, Aug. 6, during Tropical Storm Debby.
The event on Sams Point Road had previously been reported by The Island News as a potential tornado after speaking with residents in the area and reviewing a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center (NOAA), but at the time it had not been confirmed.
According to the report from the NWS, the tornado was a “short lived, high end EF0 tornado” that developed in an outer rain band of Tropical Storm Debby that initially developed over Point Creek, just south of Lady’s Island on Tuesday, Aug. 6.
The tornado moved northwest across a marsh as it headed toward Holly Hall Road where it snapped a few small trees in an uninhabited area. Then the tornado continued moving northwest across the marsh region of Rock Springs Creek where it ended near the 500 block of Sams Point Road.
On Wednesday, Aug. 7, according to reporting from The Post and Courier, Scott Edwards and Trey Horn from the Charleston-based office of the NWS came out to Lady’s Island to investigate the report of a possible tornado.
Damage from the tornado included downed and split trees, damage to the front of a car and to the singles on the room of a garage.
According to reporting from The Post and Courier, Edwards said that one thing that they to do determine if there has been a tornado is to evaluate the direction that the trees fell as well as the amount of damage.
Tornadoes cause debris to be thrown around and fly in different directions whereas straight line winds cause trees to fan out.
In addition to the confirmed tornado on Lady’s Island, there have been reports made by residents of a possible tornado on 1st Coleman Road on St. Helena Island.
Lucinda Cohen, who lives in the area, said that she heard a lot of wind following their power being knocked out. The next morning, she and her neighbors left their homes to find that trees had been picked up and thrown all over the place, including on the power lines.
Cohen said that one of her neighbors told her that he heard what sounded like a freight train outside.
One person who lives in the area and had trees knocked down on his property was S.C. Rep. Michael Rivers. One large tree knocked down on his property fell onto his tractor.
Rivers said that fortunately for him, though, he was asleep through everything and only saw the damage the following morning.
Neither incident resulted in major damage to property, and no one was injured.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
