VA loan in Folly Beach, SC

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.

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - Polls closed at 7 p.m. Tuesday across South Carolina in local races that state election officials say have a direct impact on the day-to-day lives of people in the Lowcountry.

Charleston County election leaders expect voter turnout to hover around 20 percent this year, with only municipal races on the ballot and no statewide or federal contests. Charleston County Board of Elections Executive Director Isaac Cramer said even though these races don’t attract the same attention as presidential elections, they are still critical.

“Municipal elections just don’t have the same level of engagement,” Cramer said. “Although it’s not national headlines, they are local issues that affect each one of us in our day-to-day lives. Our goal is just to let people know that there’s an election, there’s time to do your research, look up the candidates, but know that today’s election does impact your day-to-day life.”

Cramer said the ballots across the county vary by city and district, with many positions up for grabs.

“Across Charleston County, we have many municipalities voting for mayor, for council, we have CPW, which is Commissioner for Public Works, we have watershed commissioners,” Cramer said. “So we’ll have a wide range of different things on the ballot, but for a lot of the city of Charleston this is very important. You won’t have council on your ballot unless you live in an even district. If you live in an odd district, you will only have CPW on your ballot.”

Click here for the Live 5 2025 Voter Guide.

Some of the key local elections include the mayors’ races in Mount Pleasant, Isle of Palms, Folly Beach, Sullivan’s Island, and Lincolnville. Several city and town council seats are also on the ballot in Charleston, Summerville, Goose Creek, and Moncks Corner, along with a special election for State House District 98. In total, dozens of municipal offices from water commissioners to council members are up for grabs across Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester counties.

Election officials say the quiet nature of local election years means most polling places are not expected to be crowded. The best time to avoid lines is typically early afternoon, avoiding lunch and evening rush hours.

More than 3.35 million people are registered to vote statewide. In the Tri-County area, Charleston County has 272,000 registered voters, Berkeley County has about 155,000, and Dorchester County has just under 105,000.

Greenville County has the most registered voters in the state with just under 341,000, while Allendale County has the fewest at about 4,000.

Voters heading to the polls today will need a photo ID, though it does not have to be a Real ID used for air travel. Those voting absentee must ensure their ballots are returned to the Charleston County Board of Voter Registration and Elections by 7 p.m.

Click here to verify your voter registration, get a sample ballot or find your voting location.

Absentee ballots must be returned to the Charleston County Board of Voter Registration and Elections by 7 p.m.

All polling locations offer accessible parking spots, doorways, railings and paths. Residents with disabilities may receive help during the voting process but must tell a poll manager if assistance is needed. Voters can choose anyone to help except their employer, an agent of their employer, or an officer or agent of their union.

Curbside voting is available for those with disabilities or voters 65 years or older. Poll managers monitor the area every 15 minutes to assist anyone who cannot stand in line.

Polls are open until 7 p.m.

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.

With a number of jetties and varied coastline, Folly Beach has a number of different spots. All of Folly is lined with jetties. They've done a questionable job of protecting the beach, but they've produced lots of different peaks. The best spot at Folly is called the Washout. It's a long stretch of jettied beachbreak that can break with a tremendous amount of power on northeasterly swells or on hurricane swells. Beware of jetty rocks, underwater debris and current on larger swells. Take Highway... Read more

Sullivan's Island is just south of the Isle of Palms and gets energy from NE/E swells, but the jetty for the shipping lane blocks all southerly energy. On a NE windswell, the peak in front of Bert's Bar once offered board snapping power as it's right next to the shipping channel, so there's deep water just offshore. It's at the end of the south causeway to the island. It can be offshore here when it's howling side/onshore everywhere else. Strong north current on big swells. Shoaling has turned t... Read more

A low-quality but reasonably consistent beachbreak in an otherwise surf-stoked but wave-starved area of South Carolina, Pawleys Island Pier will occasionally offer long, shreddable lefts when offshore winds cooperate with powerful NE swells, but it saves its best face for SE swells — the more tropical, the better. The Pier only works on a mid to incoming tide and shuts down after the surf gets a foot or two overhead. Most of the action is concentrated on the south side. The waves can be crumbly... Read more