Tropical Storm Idalia is moving away from the East Coast over the Atlantic but has left its mark across the southeast.
Idalia made landfall Wednesday morning in Florida’s Big Bend region as a category 3 storm, then weakened as it quickly moved northeast and impacted the Carolinas and Virginia coastline as a tropical storm, bringing heavy rain, dangerous storm surge, damaging winds, and even tornadoes as it moved through.
In South Carolina, one driver on the highway caught video of another car being flipped into the air by a tornado. Authorities say the accident caused minor injuries.
In downtown Charleston, a man got stuck at a friend’s house overnight because of the rising waters coinciding with high tide.
“I thought by 10 or 11, the tide would kind of come down, and I’d be able to get out. The water was up to like the door, and by like one o’clock, I still couldn’t leave,” said Sean Fitzgerald.
In nearby Folly Beach, Idalia left a trail of erosion worse than a hurricane that hit in 2016.
“And today we’re actually more eroded than we were after Hurricane Matthew. We measured a nine and a half-foot tide. Then, out here on the beachfront, we had surge and wave energy on top of that. And that is what pushed the ocean water over the dunes and through the access points and onto the roadways,” said Nicole Elko, a coastal consultant for the City of Folly Beach.
As the tropical storm continued up the coast, so did the damage and flooding.
Farther north, in Whiteville, North Carolina, more than 50 miles inland, aerial footage shows numerous cars submerged in floodwater from the heavy rain bands.
Thankfully, Idalia is pulling away from the coastline, and conditions will continue to improve.