High winds devastate portions of northwestern Lexington County near Chapin Monday night

Chapin, SC 06/27/2023 (Paul Kirby) – Extremely high winds struck areas out of the Lexington County town of Chapin Monday night causing many people to continue to be without power as crews worked throughout the day Tuesday to try and get multiple communities back online. Homes were damaged by falling trees and many roads were completely blocked by debris as crews continue to work to return the area to some sort of a semblance of normalcy. The first reports of the severe weather began coming in just after 10:30 p.m. in the vicinity of Wessinger Road and Putnam Drive. Wessinger Road is the only road in and out of a peninsula that juts out into Lake Murray and is bounded by Bear Creek on one side and John’s Creek on the other.

Putnam Drive was completely closed by the storm and remains that way late Tuesday. The storm knocked the utility infrastructure down snapping poles into splinters and bringing the power lines down across the road all along its length. Large trees were snapped off and laying across the asphalt as late as 4:00 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. A number of homes in the area were damaged by falling trees and the high winds. Crews were still working to clear the road to provide access to the end of that point.

Ben Kirby, a resident of Indian Summer Point off Libby Ariel Circle within a mile of Putnam Drive, said that a cooperative group of utility crews that included Mid-Carolina Electric, Dominion Energy, and the sub-contractor Sumter Utilities, were all in the area replacing power poles and utility infrastructure so that they could begin restringing electric wire sometime in the future. Kirby said his power went out about 10:30 p.m. Monday night and he didn’t expect it to be restored for several days. He had used his chainsaw to clear enough of the road into his home so that he and his neighbors could drive in and out if they needed to. He said that many of his neighbors had whole home generator systems that kept their homes comfortable. Kirby was using smaller generators to keep his refrigerators and freezers running but said he would probably stay with family tonight so that they could have air conditioning until their power was restored.

Emergency radio traffic coming into Lexington County’s 911 Center Monday night indicated that the worst of the storm first ripped down Putnam Drive, then crossed Bear Creek. The storm quickly began to ravage trees, homes, and utility infrastructure out on the Amick’s Ferry Road peninsula. Timber Lake Country Club reported Tuesday that they have as many as 60 to 70 trees around their golf course that were down, and the first 9 holes of the course were extremely dangerous due to storm damage. Many homes in the Timberlake area were also damaged by the high winds as were homes and buildings in the surrounding areas of that community.

The County of Lexington had employees of its Emergency Management Division working Tuesday assessing the storm damage. They also asked anyone who had photos of storm damage from that area to call 803-785-2449. Photos can be sent to the county using the email address tshehow@lex-co.com. All emails should include the home address in the subject line.

Chris Jackson, a noted local and national weather authority based out of the Midlands of SC, said that he felt this damage was not done by a tornado but rather straight-line winds from a microburst. Jackson said that the damages from these types of storms can be identical or even more severe than small or weaker tornadoes. He also said that they don’t get the attention they deserve because they don’t cause the same fear factor that the word tornado carries. The National Weather Service usually classifies a storm such as this as a tornado only after studying the images of the radar. This can show rotation in several different colors where winds moving away from a central core may be one color and then as it rotates back toward the core in a circular motion another color. They also can use other indicators. Jackson often explains on his social media pages like https://www.facebook.com/MySCWeather/ how all this works. As of Tuesday evening, there was no indication that the NWS was going to contradict Jackson and classify last nights weather event as a tornado either.