By admin 
A summer storm hit the Columbia area Thursday afternoon, causing up to five inches of rain to fall in some places in less than 90 minutes, according to the National Weather Service.
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“We had a pretty notable flash flood event from Columbia into Lexington County and down into Augusta as well,” said Matthew Gropp, a National Weather Service meteorologist.
“In terms of rainfall, we had three to five inches of rain across the Columbia area and that all fell in a quick period of time, within an hour or an hour and a half,” Gropp said.
“That’s as high as we get around here, outside of a tropical storm,” he said.
Significant flooding happened in the Five Points area and around Main and Whaley streets, he said.
In a few places, cars stalled and people had to be rescued out of their vehicles, or they got out and walked through the water, he said.
Columbia and Richland County law enforcement reported water rescues from cars, Gropp said. Those incidents happened in Granby Park and another near the Gervais Street bridge, he said.
Flooding also took place up into Forest Acres, parts of which can be “flash flood prone,” he said.
The deluge was caused by an offshore high pressure system that is pushing a lot of moisture onshore, Gropp said.
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A lot of moisture at the low levels of the atmosphere combined with 90-degree temperatures and a slow moving storm system caused that very heavy rain, he said.
“We still see people drive into these flooded roadways consistently, thinkjng they can get through it. But anytime you see significant water going over a roadway, don’t try to drive through it. It’s not worth the car or your life.”
Gropp said people should remember the simple slogan: “Turn around; don’t drown.”
Electric failures
Power companies that serve the Columbia area coped with a spate of outages.
Dominion spokesman Matt Long said in an email, “There were approximately 7,000 outages scattered across the Midlands at peak Thursday afternoon. Crews worked through the night until the last outage was restored.”
Avery Wilks, vice president of communications for the Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina, said various co-ops in Midlands-related service areas reported outages but it wasn’t anything crews couldn’t handle.
“The most outages we had in any one co-op at any one time was a little less than 600 at Laurens Electric,” Wilks said. “Our guys jumped into action and got the power on relatively quickly.”
Wilks added, “Summer storms are a thing that we are used to responding to, and they can cause outages when trees fall on power lines, or when branches fall and hit our infrastructure.”
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