Episode 68: HURRICANE HUGO : A Night Like No Other (Part 1) Special Edition

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We start season 5 with a bonus two part series far from the topic of politics, Government or Richard Nixon. Though President Nixon did start NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which began the National Weather Service and Hurricane Tracking. A service that has saved thousands of lives and improved weather tracking  and predicting immensely since the 1970's. So in a way this show and the storm it covers, and the lives saved at the time in 1989, were a direct result of the leadership and Presidency of Richard Nixon.  So now lets relive....

HURRICANE HUGO, 

It was a night like no other in my lifetime. I was 18 years old, a freshman in college, and sitting in my dorm at Spartanburg Methodist College with a guy down the hall from me from James Island S.C.  His home would be destroyed. I got lucky, my townhouse was totally unharmed in Myrtle Beach, my family in Hartsville S.C. was unharmed. But the ride home the next week was just surreal.  From the moment you got to Columbia S.C. all the way to the beach, destruction was everywhere you looked.  No one who lived through Hurricane Hugo in South Carolina has ever forgotten it. 

Today thousands of people have moved into the path Hugo followed. None of them have ever experienced anything close to the wrath of a Hurricane as powerful nor as enormous as Hugo.  This show is for all of you. Heed its warning because one day we will see it again. Here relive the tension as Hurricane Hugo approaches and then hear it roar as this  incredible night unfolds again. Hugo rushed in after midnight and packed a mighty punch in the dark of night. 

A night no one has ever forgotten, a night like no other in our lifetime. 

From the National Weather Service Website: 

" Around midnight on September 22, 1989,  Hurricane Hugo made landfall just north of Charleston, South Carolina at Sullivan's Island as a Category 4 storm with estimated maximum winds of 135-140 mph and a minimum central pressure of 934 millibars (27.58 inches of Hg). Hugo produced tremendous wind and storm surge damage along the coast and even produced hurricane force wind gusts several hundred miles inland into western North Carolina. In fact, Hugo produced the highest storm tide heights ever recorded along the U.S. East Coast, around 20 feet in Bulls Bay, SC near Cape Romain! At the time, Hugo was the strongest storm to strike the U.S. in the previous 20-year period and was the nation's costliest hurricane on record in terms of monetary losses (~$7 billion in damage). It is estimated that there were 49 deaths directly related to the storm, 26 of which occurred in the U.S., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands."

(We would like to thank Santee Cooper Electric for the use of footage from their documentary "Bringing Back the Light" and all of the journalism outlets in our state for their coverage, WPDE, WIS, WCIS, The State Newspaper, The Sun News, and The Weather Channel, plus a North Carolina Radio station . )

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