Severe weather knocks out power in Midlands, urban flood advisory issued

Power was knocked out in pockets across the Midlands Wednesday afternoon as a strong thunderstorm swept through the region.

At 9:45 p.m., SCE&G reported more than 2,000 customers in the dark in Richland Counties. At the height of the outages, more than 8,000 customers lost power in Richland and Lexington Counties.

The National Weather Service issued a special weather statement warning of wind gusts of up to 45-50 miles per hour and pea-sized hail possible with the storm in addition to an urban small stream flooding in Columbia.

Although 1.41 inches of rain fell in about a two hour period with the storm, and it’s the first appreciable rain in the Columbia area in several weeks, this storm will have a minimal impact on the drought engulfing the entire state.

“These are isolated storms,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Jeff Linton in Columbia.

This story was originally published August 5, 2015 at 4:27 PM.