looking “like Hurricane Hazel came through”
I’ve never heard anything like that… NOT!!! Growing up I heard the exact same thing repeatedly.
Hugo did the same thing 150 miles to the south of where Hazel came ashore. One side of my family were primarily from 100 miles above Charleston and 70 miles inland and they got hit hard. The Francis Marion National Forest and Sumter National Forest which collectively contain a great deal of lands in South Carolina from Charleston to Georgetown to the Santee Lakes was completely wiped out by Hugo. 10 years later there wasn’t a tree in that forest taller than 20 feet whereas prior to Hugo most trees were at least 100 ft tall. Most areas in the forest could not be accessed for many years after that storm.
My best friend in the Navy had a 30 foot sailboat tied up at the Charleston Marina. It wound up at the bottom of a pile of boats 40 feet high, 150 feet deep and 500 feet long. There were well over 400 boats in the pile. from wikipedia.. As of 2015, Hurricane Hugo is the most intense tropical cyclone to strike the East Coast north of Florida since 1900. When I moved back there in 1993 there were people who still wore t shirts that said “I survived Hugo”
Smarter than the average bear
