NEWBERRY COUNTY, S.C. — Weather Service survey crews in Columbia graded a brief twister that cut through far eastern Newberry County before dawn on Oct. 11 as an EF2, estimating peak winds of 115 mph and listing zero injuries or fatalities.
The funnel began around 6:05 a.m. at the Old Blair Road / Henderson Ferry Road junction roughly 9 miles north-northwest of Pomaria, then faded by 6:09 a.m. about 10 miles north of Pomaria, short of the Broad River.
Track length measured 1.47 miles, with a peak width of 450 yards. Crews documented broken and uprooted pines and hardwoods, power poles yanked down by falling timber, a small camper turned over on an Old Blair Road lot, and light damage at one house ringed by snapped pines.
Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster said the path crossed a thinly settled strip beside Fairfield County that includes game-management ground near Sumter National Forest. Dispatch logged no emergency calls from that pocket, and county public works later removed limbs from county-maintained roads.
Weekend downpours dumped 5 to 7 inches of rain in parts of the county, Foster said. Little Mountain Fire and Rescue also pulled a motorist from a flooded creek; that person was unhurt.
Columbia forecasters called the weekend a rare, layered severe-weather bout linked to the remnants of Hurricane Isaias, with surveyed twisters also noted elsewhere in South Carolina. They stressed the Newberry EF2 rating is still a preliminary field finding.
