We just moved from Ohio to Bluffton, SC and new to hurricanes (still asking ourselves why we made this move). Lol.. We were told Greenville SC is the place to go during a hurricane. What are your thoughts?
One model has the storm coming up through GA and into SC between Greenville and Columbia. I am just west of Columbia and have never had to evacuate. I would not make the trek to Greenville when Columbia will do. If the storm does go up between Greenville and Columbia, it's an either/or situation. We should have high winds and a lot of rain but not the flooding you would expect in Bluffton. Freepmail me if you want to "talk".
During Mathew we had a mandatory evacuation from Hilton Head. Many of the closer hotels inland were already reserved. Atlanta was the default choice because of the availability of hotels. Greenville was a good choice for Mathew. It took us 13 hours to get to Atlanta despite the fact that all of the lanes were devoted to outbound traffic. The earlier you can leave the better. The longer you wait the more difficult it is to find hotel rooms and the heavier the traffic along evacuation routes.
We lost 16 trees on our property. Six came down and the rest were leaning. Fortunately only one tree hit our garage with a glancing blow puncturing the roof. We came back a day after the green light was given. We only lost electricity for 12 hours. No flooding here in Windmill Harbour.
We have been here for 30 months. We didn't bargain for hurricanes. One of the selling points for this area is that hurricanes bypass us because we are so far inland given the indentation in the coast line. We are about the longitude of Cleveland.
Bluffton did well during the storm.
Should be far enough inland, and definitely high enough.
We have good friends who recently moved to Beaufort/Savannah full time; they’ve had the place in Beaufort for a while as a second home, his job is now in Savannah vs. ATL area.
I suspect he’ll stay in the hospital.
We love visiting Beaufort, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
The Upstate can experience tropical storm conditions of wind and rain, obviously not storm surge. Flash flooding is always a concern though. Bluffton at least has Hilton Head as a shield. If you leave, leave early as I95 and I26 are a madhouse in a storm.