COLUMBIA, S.C. — After severe weather moved across much of the Southeast on Monday morning, crews from the National Weather Service in Columbia have begun surveying the damage across the Midlands.
During the storms Monday morning, a total of 28 tornado warnings were issued in South Carolina.
Monday afternoon, one team found EF-3 damage from a tornado that tracked over 30 miles through Orangeburg County with estimated winds of 140 mph. Two people died from that storm and seven people were injured.
The National Weather Service estimates that there were multiple powerful tornadoes Monday morning, but needs to survey every area that was damaged before they have official results.
Frank Alsheimer, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, says the tornado outbreak and storms Monday morning were unlike anything he has seen in South Carolina before.
"We haven't seen a setup like this or the number of tornadoes like this since 2008, so it's over a decade since we've had something this significant," Alsheimer tells WLTX. "We saw things on radar that frankly we have never seen before."
Meteorologists will continue surveying damage this week, with the hope of having preliminary information on every tornado by the end of the week.
"We pretty much have all our available folks out there doing the surveys. Because of Covid 19 and distancing restrictions it's a little more difficult than usual, we can't send out groups of people in a car for instance, so we have to keep our social distancing." says Alsheimer.
When assessing damage, the teams look for patterns in destruction, as well as what types of structures were damaged and in what way.
For example, a tree that snaps in the middle experiences different wind speeds than a tree that is completely uprooted.
Alsheimer says that they have to have a good understanding of the mechanics of how structures are build so that they can determine how they were torn apart.
"It's not just weather, but there is an engineering aspect to these survey's that is critical in determining the actual strength." says Alsheimer.
While the weather is forecast to remain calm for the rest of the week, it is still important to remain vigilant through the spring for any other weather events. Severe weather season typically ranges from the beginning of March to the end of May in South Carolina.