Lovely old Charleston floods under irma's distress

Irma waves batter Charleston's High Battery waterfront.

As winds sounded for a time like freight trains through Florence some 106 miles northwest of Charleston's Folly Beach, a parking lot in Florence on Irby Street was like crossing a stormy sea where I ran to buy batteries at Dollar Tree for a remote control.

Hurricane Irma unlike William Tecumseh Sherman who by-passed Charleston, which he harbored a special hatred after a Charleston belle jilted him when he served as an artillery lieutenant at Fort Moultrie and later blamed Charleston for starting the War Between the States, took no mercy pounding Charleston's Lowcountry coast and putting Charleston again-that great Southern symbol of rebellion and discontent- under water.

At its height according to Charleston's Post & Courier daily newspaper, Irma generated a nearly 10-foot tide. That was 4 feet more than normal and among the worst tidal surges in 80 years in Charleston after Hugo damaged Charleston in 1989 and a cyclone laid the city to ruin and waste in 1940.

Charleston streets under water.