Nearly 1 million customers without power in SC as powerful storm Helene rips into state

Nearly a million customers were in the dark Friday morning across South Carolina as the effects of powerful Hurricane Helene ripped into the state.

The storm made landfall in Florida late Thursday night as a category 3 hurricane, and then traveled inland into Georgia and South Carolina. Helene was listed as a tropical storm as of 6 a.m. Friday morning. The National Weather Service in Columbia clocked winds at 67 miles an hour at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport at 6:12 a.m., with 82 mph gusts in Augusta.

As of 7:19 a.m., more than 974,000 customers were without power in South Carolina, according to PowerOutage.us . The outages were especially widespread across the Midlands and in the southeastern corner of the state.

More than 79,000 customers were without power in Richland County as of 7:19 a.m., while Lexington County had nearly 92,000 outages. Charleston County had 41,000 outages at that point, while Greenville County had more than 153,000 customers without power.

In terms of major providers, Dominion Energy had nearly 327,000 customers without power as of 7:19 a.m., while Duke Energy had more than 326,000 outages.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.