COLUMBIA, S.C. — Tens of thousands of people in South Carolina were left without power after Tuesday's storms blew over trees and powerlines throughout the state.
The storms moved through the state from around noon to 6 p.m., largely in one long line of storm cells that moved from west to east.
At its peak, near 4:30 p.m., roughly 88,000 homes and businesses were left without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us, an aggregator website. In the Midlands, many of those outages were in the southern Midlands, including Orangeburg, Bamberg, and Clarendon Counties. That number dropped to about 76,000 by 6:30 p.m. and was continuing to fall.
More outages were reported along the counties bordering the state's coastline. Several tornado warnings were issued there and
In Bamberg, which is about 60 miles southwest of Columbia, an apparent tornado struck the downtown area. The top half of two buildings were torn off, throwing a pile of bricks onto a city street. There was structure damage to other buildings as well as trees knocked down on homes.
No serious injuries were reported. The National Weather Service said it would send send a survey team to the area Wednesday to confirm if it was a tornado.