Snow mostly gone, but some still without power

The snowfall from Friday night was a mere happy memory by Sunday. Though some tiny piles remained-- mostly in shady areas -- all that was left as a reminder were downed limbs and power lines.

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As of Sunday evening, the overwhelming number of South Carolina Electric & Gas customers who'd reported outages were back on line. The Charleston-Mount Pleasant area had about 16 customers down, while Summerville and Walterboro had about 12 customers left to reconnect.

Most customers of the Berkeley Electric Cooperative were also out of the dark. All of the utility's main power lines had been re-energized, though about 200 customers were without power late into Sunday night, mostly in the Ravenel area.

Officials advised that for every individual home that has an outage, the power line supplying the individual home has to be visually inspected and cleared of obstructions before power can be restored.

The process is expected to be time-consuming since the majority of the remaining outages are individual spots and widely scattered across Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties.

The co-op maintains over 5,000 miles of power lines, including through the Francis Marion National Forest. BEC serves over 80,000 customers in the region.

Meanwhile, problems associated with "black ice," the transparent freezing of water on the roadways, did not seem to materialize in many places. Officials in the colder Lowcountry counties of Berkeley and Dorchester said they were unaware of any major accidents tied to the phenomenon.

The snowfall threat hasn't gone away entirely for South Carolina, or for other Deep South states such as Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia. Mountainous portions of Georgia and the Carolinas could get up to 3 inches, the National Weather Service said, indicating 2 to 4 inches could fall by early today.

Reach Schuyler Kropf at skropf@postandcourier.com or 937-5551.