Socastee Flooding Questions (Florence, Conway, North: houses, neighborhood, high school)

[Ninny899]

I've been watching some You tube videos about the Socastee flooding from Hurricane Florence in 2018. Didnt look very nice.

How far on average from the ICW was flooded? 1/4 mile? 1/2 mile?

How far along the ICW did it extend? I saw one video from Socastee to Bucksville but did it go beyond that?

Are the residents still recovering today?

How often does this happen?

This is an area I'm considering relocating to so obviously I need to choose wisely.

Thanks
Jim

[CTyankee54]

Generally, the flooding extended about a 1/4 mile depending on where along the ICW you look. I would encourage you to take a look at the flood maps here: https://www.horrycounty.org/Online-S...EMA-Flood-Maps


Bad flooding does not happen that often but it has happened twice in the past 5 years.



Residents are still recovering although many have been able to remodel their homes. I would be very careful when looking at any home along the ICW and ask specifically if the home has ever been flooded. There are many homes in the area behind Socastee High School that were flooded and I see quite a few listings in that area. I would bet that many are flooded homes being sold by owners so they can get out of harms way.



Most areas in Socastee were not impacted by the flooding and there are may wonderful communities from which to choose and be safe from flooding. But, as you say, you need to choose wisely.

[Psychoma]

While I don't have details for you, this NOAA aftermath imagery page does show the flooding from Florence when it was taking place in Conway, SC taken on Sept 19th. The Socastee & ICW & beach imagery was taken earlier on Sept 16th, the greater MB area 17th so this may not show any flooding that may have occurred from the ICW. (You can turn imagery dates on/off in top right corner of page with the layers symbol (stack of paper): https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/f....7121/-78.9491

In addition to the FEMA flood maps mentioned above, you may want to also check out the hurricane storm surge maps. Here's the official storm surge maps from the US National Hurricane Center. Note: These are considered 'near worse-case’ scenario, each storm will be different, some storms will cause flooding others may not at all, these assume storm comes in right at high tide(surge is the rise in water above normal tide level), highest surge is typically found on the NorthEast corner of the enter point/eye of a hurricane and less further away from that point you go, every mile makes a difference in hurricanes, you'll need to use the links at the top of the page to change storm category as water is usually higher with higher the storm category, the colors represent water depth over normally dry ground so yellow means 3 to 6ft water depth possible and red indicates 9+ft possible over normally dry ground, etc., the map does NOT take into account rain or regular river flooding (See FEMA maps), map does include waterways connected to the ocean as surge can travel up waterways, map is considered accurate down to 'neighborhood' level so you can't zoom in to your specific house, keep in mind only 4 Cat5's have ever been known to hit the US with last being Michael in 2018. This year will mark the 30th anniversary of Hugo (1989), the last Cat4 to hit the SC coast. https://noaa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Ma...935fad&entry=1

[SPARKY12]

We live on the ICW going north right after the 501 bridge. The water was extremely high, it seemed for months, the houses didn't flood because we're very high up from the water, but it came over our seawall.