It started raining this morning in Charleston, and it’s still raining a bit now.

Not that there’s anything wrong with rain, but when you combine a day’s worth with flood-prone areas and a high tide that doesn’t help the situation, things get soggy quickly.

When I walked out to my car a little while ago to run an errand, by the time I got to the car, I was standing in four inches of water.  My tennis shoes will likely be dry again in early 2010.  A friend of mine from church told me she tried to walk her puppy in her backyard and they both nearly ended up going for a swim.  And speaking of church, the front yard of mine is a lake.  I’m hoping that no water made its way into the building itself, but there was no way to get to the building to find out.

And local weather guru Jared reports that we’ve shattered the old record today with more than six inches of rainfall.

I’m hoping for drier weather tomorrow.

On this date in 1989, an unwelcome visitor named Hugo made its mark in Charleston as a Category 4 hurricane.  It had been a Category 5 before weakening slightly just before landfall.  It caused $7 billion in damage in the mainland United States, making it the costliest storm up to that point.  (It is now the sixth-costliest.)

I was living in Columbia at the time, and Hugo was so powerful when it got 100 miles inland and reached Columbia that it knocked our power out for a week!

Charleston has been lucky over the last 19 years.  (Excuse me while I knock on something made of wood for a moment.)

I don’t like hurricanes.  Why am I living on the coast?

I’m just hoping that luck doesn’t run out any time soon.

The gas station I normally buy from adjusted its price per gallon by about twenty cents amid the sudden panic that there would be no more gas because of Ike.  But several gas stations around South Carolina decided to take advantage of the opporunity and reportedly raise their prices above the $5.00 mark.

But now South Carolina’s attorney general is on the case.  A little-known law in South Carolina allows the attorney general to prosecute businesses for price gouging any time an emergency is declared (even in another state) by the president.  Bush declared emergencies in Texas and Louisiana last night.

This law comes into play if a commodity’s price might be affected by some sort of emergency situation, and targets businesses who raise prices too high.  There was no concrete definition provided for what makes a price high enough for prosecution, but if I owned a gas station and I raised the price per gallon by a buck or more in a single day, yeah, I’d be worried.

Well, September 11, 2008 turned out to be a day of terror after all.

Not over some terrorist activity, but over a naturally-occurring gift from Mother Nature:  Hurricane Ike, which is currently poised to hit Texas.  Refineries have been shut down as the storm approaches, and gas prices along the gulf coast have risen sharply in reaction.  Rumors have been running rampant that gas is approaching the $5.00 mark, or at least will approach that price, if the hurricane does enough damage that refineries are delayed in reopening and the supply of gas dwindles.

I don’t know whether what happened next happened across the country or only here in the Lowcountry, but people heard reports on the radio of gas along the coast — the gulf coast — potentially reaching the $5.00 mark.  Then, like that little game we all played in grade school where you form a line and the first person whispers something to the second, and it continues down the line until the last person ends up with a completely different message, the “official” story became that gas prices here in Charleston were not only possibly headed towards the $5.00 mark, but that, inexplicably, they would magically jump up to five bucks a gallon today at 5:00pm.

Five at five?  Sounds like a great marketing ploy if whatever you sell is normally more than five bucks.  But it’s not the kind of thing you’d do to advertise a price hike.  And why 5:00pm?  Why not 4:00pm?  That way, they’d be sure to get even the rush hour traffic composed of people who sneak out of the office a bit early when the boss isn’t looking.

Gas stations all around Charleston were suddenly dealing with long lines of angry customers.  Some were suggesting — suggesting, mind you — that people limit their gas purchase to ten gallons…just in case.  Naturally, that fueled speculation of a potential gas shortage.

Suddenly, it was 1979 or so.

All afternoon, our newsroom was getting emails and telephone calls from people who had heard from a friend or a friend of a friend that gas prices were already up around $4.50.  We were hearing that people were getting nasty in line.  (As if a price of $4.50 wouldn’t come close to giving people a reason to be nasty!)  Some people had been informed that by Saturday, there would be no gas left.  Ever?  Seriously?

I had to get a few gallons’ worth of gas this evening, and I paid $3.65 a gallon.  Just last week, I paid about $3.45.  A nice two-dime increase in a single day.

And have I mentioned that this hurricane hasn’t made landfall, yet?  Of course, when has that ever stopped an oil company from sneaking the prices up?

I’m all for getting more hybrids on the road and reducing our dependence on oil as soon as possible.  But in the meantime, until hybrids are affordable for everyone, we need one more new law where gasoline is concerned:  under no circumstances can a gas station raise the price of gas they’ve already paid for and that is sitting in their tanks waiting to be pumped out, just because gas they buy some other time might be higher.

Can I get an amen?

Of course on a day like this, when everyone’s scrambling to get their gas before the pumps “go dry,” the normal rules of supply and demand would still trump the law:  with demand that high, there’s no way the price wasn’t going up.

Bin Laden’s probably laughing at all of this new terror.  I doubt if he could have done better himself.

Well, for those of you who were wondering, we survived Tropical Storm Hanna. It never even became a hurricane, but it got just about as close to a Category One status as a storm can get without actually crossing the line.

The forecast track had the weather guys guessing all the way to the end. It kept wanting to edge its way west, which kept putting it closer to Charleston, then kept moving more north, meaning it was going to miss us, after all. And in the end, it spared South Carolina any major damage at all, according to official reports.

According to official reports:

• Hanna made landfall near the border of North and South Carolina at 3:20am.
• Despite reports of isolated flooding and power outages closer to the landfall area, there are no reports of any significant damage in South Carolina.
• Only about 650 people made their way to shelters during the storm, and the shelters have already closed.

The last one in particular is a good thing, because it indicates that while Hanna was never going to be a major storm even if it had been a direct hit, there were at least some people willing to take even a tropical storm seriously.

I hope this is the last threat to the Charleston area this season.  I’ve realized that I’m not a fan of this hurricane business.

Forgive a telephone-related pun, but it does double duty in this case.

Just when I couldn’t stall around any longer about heading to our newsroom to answer calls from angry viewers who wanted to watch their shows instead of severe weather coverage, I was told that news had it covered!  Sweet.

I had already had enough attitude just reading a few incoming emails.  I never cease to be amazed — although after 17+ years in television, I shouldn’t be surprised anymore — by the level of rudeness people display when they have something to say.

They’re quick to tell us what we do wrong, and even quicker to tell us what “idiots” we are.  (And that’s the kind of term the more polite ones say.)  And of course, they can’t seem to resist adding that they’re “never watching our station again.”

I’m not unsympathetic at all.  I appreciate the fact that they like something we have to offer enough that they’d get passionate about it.

But I also suspect that they wouldn’t stand still for someone talking to them that way for one second, and that if there was severe weather threatening their specific street and we weren’t on the air alerting them about it, they’d be raising hell about why we were “asleep at the switch.”  (Believe me, I’ve worked at other stations where we missed something and received exactly that kind of response.)

So I wonder what gives them the audacity to take that kind of attitude with someone else.  There is a right way and a wrong way to complain.  Some know how to do it effectively.  Most, unfortunately, don’t seem to get it.

Have I mentioned recently that I am not a fan of hurricanes?  Thought so.

So Hanna, which is still not a hurricane at the moment, and is still heading towards North Carolina.  We’ll get something from it here in Charleston, but because it is a tropical storm, the impact still shouldn’t be so bad.  They’ve already been seeing higher surfs in Florida as Hanna gets closer to the eastern seaboard.  They’re calling for heavy rains from Jacksonville north. They’re calling for wind gusts here potentially up to 70 miles-per-hour, so that could be cause for some concern, but compared to what could have been, I think we’ll have it easy.

Ike, which was a Category Four storm last night, has weakened slightly to a Category Three.  The latest forecast track I saw has it headed toward Miami.  That makes me feel much better, except for the fact that my friends Chip & Lynne and the kids are in Tampa, so if this storm hits Florida, they’re going to get it.

The only good news about Ike at the moment is that it’s hitting the same shear forces that ripped up Fay a couple of weeks ago.  It could potentially weaken to a Category Two before reaching Florida.  I’m all for that.

Josephine is still way out, and is still a very weak tropical storm.  Josephine is my kind of gal.

Meanwhile, if things get dicey here, I’ll try to do some further updates as I can; it’s going to be a crazy day at work, but at the absolute worst, if the power goes, I can now update the blog with my phone.  The wonders of technology, right?

So my first day back to the office after a holiday that I actually got to take off was spent dealing with what could be some messy weather coming by the end of the week.  At the moment, various forecast tracks have Tropical Storm Hanna becoming a hurricane and heading towards the Georgia coast.  That wouldn’t be the greatest news for Charleston, since we’d then be on the northeast side of the storm, where the most damaging winds generally occur.

Last year was my first hurricane season spent here in the Lowcountry.  Charleston hasn’t had a major “direct hit” in years.  The last major hit, as far as I recall — someone local correct me if I’m wrong — was Hugo in late September, 1989.  Some might therefore suggest that Charleston is due.

I don’t like that kind of reasoning.  Any more, I would guess, than the people of New Orleans appreciated being told that they were somehow “due” for Katrina.

I suppose that I should be grateful because there’s so much extra prep work in terms of making sure we have all our bases covered for hurricane conditions that it’s helping keep my mind busy so I’m not focused on another thing that happened today: my friends leaving Charleston bound for California.  I’d like to say that I was so incredibly busy that I didn’t think about them once, and that I didn’t tear up a single time at the thought of them moving.

I’d be lying.  Big time.

In any event, if a hurricane makes landfall in the Charleston area, it will be my first experience in a “ground zero” coastal weather situation.  This is just a guess, mind you, but I don’t think I’ll enjoy it.

The deputy director of FEMA says that Hurricane Gustav will be a “catastrophe” when all is said and done.

I guess we should all be relieved that unlike Hurricane Katrina, FEMA seems aware that a hurricane is even there!

It’s a little intimidating when you suddenly realize that it’s 12:33am and you don’t have a post ready for 1:00am, yet.  But let’s talk about hurricanes and tropical weather.

I work in television and I live in Charleston, South Carolina.  So we’re right on the coast.  When a hurricane (or tropical storm, tropical depression, subtropical system, or whatever else) is headed our way, it’s a big deal.  People are threatened.  Homes and property are damaged.  It impacts people in a big way.  And there’s nothing like the threat of severe weather to drive up a television station’s ratings leading up to the weather event itself.

Within the wonderful world of television, I am a promotion producer, which is a fancy way of saying I’m responsible for the commercials (we call them promos) that encourage you to watch.  And so obviously, I want everyone to watch my station whenever possible.  When there’s the chance of a hurricane, I’m supposed to get excited, because I know people will tune in to see when and where the cataclysm will occur.

There’s just one problem:  I hate severe weather.  I don’t get happy when I know a bad storm is coming.  Because I worry about my stuff outside of work.  I worry about the dogs.  I worry about my home.

On Friday morning, early projections — early projections — had the system likely to become Hurricane Fay heading towards a landfall just south of Charleston…as a Category 4 hurricane.  That would literally be a worst-case scenario for the Holy City.

After talking to the morning meteorologist, I was ready to get back on my anxiety medication.  Of course by the late afternoon, revised projections had the storm headed towards Florida instead of South Carolina.

Thank goodness for updated information.  And for the reminder that while we think we’re in charge of everything, there are some things we can do absolutely nothing about.

We need that kind of humbling experience every now and then, I think.

This morning, Tropical Storm Bertha became a hurricane, and the first hurricane of the 2008 season.

At the moment, it’s out in the Atlantic and is expected to take some kind of curve and spin itself back away from land and into nothingness.  But as local weather enthusiast Jared points out, out of several different forecast predictions, there’s one track that has it moving toward a “direct hit.”  There’s one in every crowd, you know.

Jared also brings up an interesting point:  the last Hurricane Bertha also formed on 7/7.  That was back in 1996.  That storm began south of Cape Verde and made landfall near Wilmington as a Category 2.

I hate hurricane season.

The past few days here in Charleston, we’ve had some pretty powerful storms move through.  They’re nothing like what the midwest is dealing with, and the worst of them, so far, has been a spectacular lightning show.

There’s that old phrase about “raining cats and dogs,” and there were a few moments where the rain was pounding down so hard that it might qualify for such a description.  But only for a few moments.

Adam, who recently stopped by to play one of the weekend memes, survived a storm recently powerful enough to make whales fly.  No really:  see for yourself.