Roofer in Folly Beach, SC

FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCSC) - As flooding is affecting many areas across the Lowcountry, the high tides are impacting many homeowners on Folly Beach, too.

Homeowners on Folly Beach say they haven’t experienced flooding like this in a while, with the high tide impacting beachfront properties as well as homes on the riverside.

“It’s hard to watch all that sand erode away and leave houses is kind of at risk,” homeowner Christine Bickel said.

Officials say over the years the city has been maintaining efforts to mitigate flood risks by renourishing the beaches through extra sand, fencing and sea walls.

“That’s what keeps us able to have our big family-sized beaches. I don’t know what we would do without them because, as you can see, this has been a very tough time of having the erosion and from the King Tides and the coastal surf warnings,” Bickel said.

The city also plants vegetation along the beach for extra dune protection.

“What we do is every so often we renourish the beach with sand that gets pumped out of the river or sometimes offshore to put all the sand back that keeps getting eroded and moving south toward Kiawah,” Director of Public Works for Folly Beach Eric Lutz said.

Officials say these high tides are becoming more frequent, and that seems to be the main reason for the need for extra nourishment efforts.

“They’ve got a huge problem out here. As you probably know from the beach side, mostly is where they pay a lot of attention, but the uniqueness of Folly is there’s a river back there and the beach. So, as my property is kind of smooshed in the middle, so I think they spend a lot of time with the beach, but that is an issue too for Folly residents,” homeowner Tami Bourne said.

Homes on East Ashley Street experienced flooding throughout their properties due to water rising from the river and marsh area.

“I’ve been out here since 1989, and this is really something that you don’t see this type of water levels even during hurricanes,” Bourne said.

Officials say to be aware of your surroundings and avoid any flooded areas with standing water.

“Crazy part is it all happened so fast. Like I was just here this morning at 9:30 a.m., and then I get home at 11:30 a.m., and this is what it is. That’s how quickly it can come up. That’s kind of frightening,” Bourne said.

South Carolinians have the first chance in 1,350 years to see the vivid green Comet Lemmon sparkle across the moonless sky Oct. 21 and 22. It won’t come by Earth again for another 1,350 years. It’s just one of the celestial jewels visible in the nights leading up to Halloween.

Comet Lemmon is named after Arizona’s Mount Lemmon Observatory, where the interstellar visitor was discovered as it streaked into our solar system back in January. Stargazers might be able to see it with their naked eyes Oct. 21-22, when it’s closest to Earth. Lemmon’s vibrant grass green color should definitely be visible through binoculars.

Here’s how to find it: About 45 to 90 minutes after sunset, look a bit below the Big Dipper constellation.

Astronomers believe Lemmon passed through the mysterious Oort Cloud, a sphere composed of giant ice and stone chunks at the outer edge of our solar system, far beyond Pluto.

Lemmon’s green hue comes from the comet’s carbon molecules interacting with sunlight.

“It could be amazing, or a bust. We have to wait and see,” Trident Technical College astronomy professor Blake Crosby said. He quoted a proverb, “Comets are like cats. They have tails and do what they want."

"The end of October and beginning of November, (Lemmon) will get higher in the sky and should become brighter,” he added. “A good opportunity may be Halloween, when it appears just after sunset in the western sky.”

Other cosmic wonders to view before Halloween

The Orionids meteor shower glitters above through Nov. 7, but peak viewing will be Oct. 21-22 with up to 20 meteors visible per hour. The new moon gives Americans “dark skies for what should be an excellent show,” Crosby said.

He advised astronomy lovers to take their binoculars far outside city light pollution to enjoy the shower.

Crosby said October also offers a chance to glimpse the mysterious Andromeda Galaxy climbing the eastern sky. Andromeda is twice as big as the Milky Way, and even at 2.5 million light-years away, it's our closest neighboring galaxy. It is so distant that humans may never get much chance to explore Andromeda.

The best night to see the Andromeda Galaxy in late-October is Oct. 28, the last new moon of the month, as it will be a dark night ideal for stargazing. Andromeda is best viewed from 9-11 p.m., high in the northeastern sky.

Even then, Crosby advises that Andromeda “takes a fair amount of skill to locate.”

Wando High School astronomy teacher Robbie Binnicker has seen Andromeda. He wasn’t using a powerful telescope, so the galaxy didn’t look like a spectacular luminous disc.

“It looked more like a wispy, bright cloud,” said Binnicker, who was awarded the state’s highest civilian honor, the Order of the Palmetto, in 2024 for his 34 years as an educator.

Binnicker returned to his first career love, teaching, in Charleston County after he retired as Anderson One School District superintendent last June.

“This is the first time I’ve taught astronomy and I enjoy it, but I’m not an expert,” Binnicker told The Post and Courier.

He and his students use the SkyPortal astronomy app to locate constellations. The students have learned to set up telescopes to observe sunspots. With knowledge of classic sci-fi movies and novels, Binnicker said his students discuss astronomical wonders that can't be seen in the sky, like Albert Einstein's theories of time bending and gravitational waves causing ripples in the spacetime continuum.

The students can check telescopes out from the library. Binnicker loans telescopes to his students, too. Binnicker said they learned how to set up telescopes with filters to track sunspots. Binoculars enable the students to see most celestial phenomena they're studying.

Here's how to try and find Andromeda:

Look through binoculars northwest of Pegasus, or the flying horse constellation. It’s boxed-shaped and almost perfectly square.

Perhaps someone in that luminous smudge light-years from Earth will be gazing at the Milky Way and wondering if any life is there.

‘Would you like some cornbread, Ma’am?” A server wearing an elegant floor length black apron deftly placed a warm muffin on my bread plate.

That was before we had even opened the menu at the upscale restaurant after a morning browsing the City Market in Charleston, S.C. The meal was outstanding, but the first and best meal of our trip was grilled shrimp, cheesy grits and sweet tea at a place in Folly Beach called the Lost Dog Café.

Southern manners are not a cliché – they were everywhere we went, even before we landed at the airport. On the flight from Detroit to Charleston, a gentleman in an aisle seat stood up, took my overloaded wheelie bag and swung it up into the overhead compartment for me.

After we landed he took it down, and slid it towards me with the nicest smile. The young man bagging our groceries at Publix supermarket on James Island asked if we were from Wisconsin. Hearing that Buffalo was home he nodded politely, said “Josh Allen,” then explained that he actually followed college football, and he was still reeling from the South Carolina’s recent loss to Vanderbilt.

The traffic up and down the main street of Folly Beach was heavy, especially on Saturday afternoon. There weren’t many traffic lights – even so, the drivers on the main drag didn’t gridlock, or lay on their horns.

The lady who rang up my souvenirs at Mr. John’s Beach Store wrapped up my tchotchkes like they were the crown jewels, gave me a free reusable shopping bag, and carefully arranged all my other purchases in it. Later that day, a father and son carrying surfboards walked back across the beach and stopped us as we were headed into the water, warning us there were a lot of jellyfish that day − they’d both gotten stung.

The local paper − the Folly Current − ran multiple half-page ads for the six candidates running for mayor. No mudslinging or malicious words about opponents in this municipal election, just bullet points about each candidate’s agenda, and the story of how they came to Folly Beach in the first place.

It wasn’t just the people who were courteous. To someone used to Buffalo’s changeable climate, the weather along South Carolina’s barrier islands was more than hospitable. The humidity felt balmy and welcoming, different from the heavy steamy air you might find in Florida. The sunrise over the grassy marsh next to us – we learned to call it the salt flats – was a soft blush pink, and misty.

We could see tiny bats silhouetted against the sky. They left at dawn, passing a white egret coasting in to stalk its food for the day. And a tiny, fast-moving thing that looked like the Geico gecko scooted around on the wall of the screened-in porch − never coming too close or intruding on our moment. The only rudeness that week was a rogue grackle at the beach − brashly rummaging through someone’s unattended bag, pecking a hole in a bag of Goldfish crackers, and causing a seagull riot as it simultaneously gobbled and lunged at the other birds.

Five days in Folly Beach made a lasting impression − as distinct as a footprint in the firm sand at the edge of the water, and as permanent as the sand in the miniature souvenir jar that traveled home with us.

SULLIVAN’S ISLAND — King tides and a rainy nor’easter just delivered a one-two punch to beaches along South Carolina’s coast.

Folly Beach, Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island all saw some of their sand sucked out into the stormy sea this past weekend. As sea levels in the region rise, erosion events like this one could become more common and severe.

An escarpment over 6 feet tall at Sullivan’s Island’s Thomson Park highlighted the most extreme erosion the island suffered from the 8-foot king tides and the weekend nor’easter.

The beach at the southern end of Sullivan’s Island, where the maritime forest has cropped up on accreted sand, remained wide and flat after the rains. A handful of beach walkers trekked up and down the shore, still wet from the weekend deluge. Aside from some water that had pooled at the town’s public access paths, it was business as usual on that part of the island.

Heading north, toward Breach Inlet, is where evidence of the king tides and heavy rains became apparent. The gradual slope that normally connects the dunes to the dry sandy beach sharply dropped off; the high tides created a substantial shelf, about 6 feet tall.

This section of the beach is where around 20,000 dump-trucks-worth of freshly dredged sand were placed, courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The supplemental sand was a beneficial use project. Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island both benefitted from the dredge spoil.

The town spent $646,000 last year moving a portion of that sand higher onto the beach and build up the dunes at Breach Inlet and behind Marshall Boulevard.

After the king tides and the rainy weekend, about half of that sand is gone, Sullivan’s Island Administrator Joe Henderson said.

“The dunes served their purpose,” he said.

The Isle of Palms didn’t fare as well.

Both the southern end of the island, near Breach Inlet, and the northern tip that encompasses the Wild Dunes neighborhoods and resort, were inundated by the high tides. The Ocean Club Villas, currently surrounded by scaffolding and blue netting, were hit hard by the king tides — waves reached the condominium’s foundation.

Some of the homes on the island, still recovering from damage caused by Hurricane Erin, had piles of tan sandbags stacked behind them. City leaders spent $550,000 in August to deploy hundreds of these bags to Breach Inlet, and portions of Wild Dunes, including the Ocean Club Villas and homes on Beachwood East, a highly-eroded section of the island.

A handful of Ocean Boulevard properties were guarded by the sandbags, piled several feet high to block the waves from the property. Still, a tall shelf of sand dune could be seen behind the row of houses, along with exposed roots from the grass planted to stabilize the dunes.

Folly Beach in a warming world

Across South Carolina, island communities spend millions of dollars each year to renourish their beaches. Folly Beach last October wrapped up a $22 million renourishment project, Hilton Head Island is mid-way through a massive $47.5 million renourishment and Isle of Palms in May finished moving 120,000 cubic yards of sand to protect Wild Dunes Resort as part of a $750,000 project to harvest sand from a developing shoal.

The state Department of Environmental Services estimates that South Carolina’s coastal communities spent more than $400 million in federal, state and local funds on beach renourishment from 1979 to 2023. But as the climate changes and tides rise, beach towns likely will have to pay heftier sums to keep their shores sandy and the multi-million-dollar oceanfront homes protected.

So why keep paying for sand if it’s just going to wash away?

“ Because the public infrastructure and homes are not getting washed away,” said Nicole Elko, the president of the Folly Beach-based Elko Coastal Consulting. Elko works with Folly and other coastal communities on sand renourishment and erosion issues.

South Carolina’s sea islands naturally erode and accrete mass. Sand is generally carried southward from one island to the next, and additional sediment is built up from river mouths. Folly Beach is the exception to that rule.

Folly has to undergo regular renourishment that is (typically, but not always) paid for by the U.S Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps built jetties just outside Charleston Harbor in the 19th century that disrupt the flow of sand to the island.

“Before this renourishment program began in the ’80s and ’90s, Folly didn't just lose houses, they lost entire roads,” Elko said. “ Our memories are short, but our policies are good, and we do this for a very important reason: to protect this treasure that we all love and enjoy — the beach. And in turn, the beach protects us.”

The last renourishment project on Folly Beach concluded in October 2024 to the tune of $22 million — all of which was covered by the Army Corps. While work is ongoing to determine how much sand was lost, Elko said this past weekend marked the largest erosion event since that project wrapped.

Even if the sand inevitably gets pulled away, the accounting still works out. One 2021 report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found that every dollar spent on renourishment resulted in $1,200 in economic development generated by beach tourists, and $130 for federal, state and local tax coffers.

FOLLY BEACH, S.C. (WCSC) - The 2025 Mermaids and Mateys festival filled the streets of Folly Beach, showcasing local vendors, music and family fun while also supporting the Alzheimer’s Association through fundraising efforts as well as donating a portion of ticket sales.

“It’s a personal thing that I’ve lost grandparents, and my fiancé has lost her father,” volunteer for the Alzheimer’s Association Eric Sposato said. “So, I think everybody can know somebody who is affected at some point in their lives. If we can band together and find that cure, we can help with future generations.”

“Imagine seeing someone who one day, they remember your name and then all of a sudden, they don’t. They don’t know who you are, they don’t realize that you’re their family,” Vanessa Charles said.

The community showed out in their best mermaid and matey costumes as well, transforming Center Street on Folly Beach

There were plenty of family fun activities too such as face painting, bounce houses and meeting mermaids.

A crowd favorite was the Dunk Tank, with all proceeds going to the Alzheimer’s Foundation, making the festival a way for the community to have fun while also supporting the mission to end Alzheimer’s disease.

“It’s always great doing community service and giving back,” Dunk Tank Volunteer DJ Rich said. “I don’t mind taking a beating in the Dunk Tank, you know, if it’s for a good cause.”

The festival also featured local organizations and businesses making a difference in the community.

“As business owners, we get an opportunity to get some revenue insurgents like during the slower times. And it’s also neat for these festivals because we see more locals as opposed to tourists,” owner of Folly Fossils Everett White said.

The festival also brought together other local organizations such as Surfers Healing, an organization to help teach surfing to people with autism.

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