More than 1.2M customers without power in SC as powerful storm Helene battered the state

More than 1.2 million customers were still in the dark Friday afternoon across South Carolina as the effects of powerful Hurricane Helene rippled through the state.

The storm made landfall in Florida late Thursday night as a category 3 hurricane, and then traveled inland into Georgia and South Carolina. Helene was listed as a tropical storm as of 6 a.m. Friday morning. The National Weather Service in Columbia clocked winds at 67 mph at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport at 6:12 a.m., with 82 mph gusts in Augusta.

As of 2 p.m. Friday, 1.23 million customers were without power in South Carolina, according to PowerOutage.us. The outages were especially widespread across the Midlands and in the southeastern section of the state.

More than 91,000 customers were without power in Richland County as of 2 p.m., while Lexington County had nearly 103,000 outages. Spartanburg County had 171,000 outages at that point, while Greenville County had more than 260,000 customers without power.

In terms of major providers, Dominion Energy had nearly 301,000 customers without power as of 2 p.m. Friday, while Duke Energy had more than 614,000 outages.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

This story was originally published September 27, 2024 at 7:00 AM.

Chris Trainor

The State

Chris Trainor is a retail reporter for The State and has been working for newspapers in South Carolina for more than 21 years, including previous stops at the (Greenwood) Index-Journal and the (Columbia) Free Times. He is the winner of a host of South Carolina Press Association awards, including honors in column writing, government beat reporting, profile writing, food writing, business beat reporting, election coverage, social media and more.