The South Carolina Department of Public Safety will conduct a hurricane evacuation exercise on Thursday to test lane reversal plans for all three major coastal areas of the state.

Library uses federal funding to run project that tries to prepare residents for hurricanes by looking at past storms

Inside Georgetown County’s Emergency Operations Center on Tuesday, representatives from several county agencies, utility companies, and even the Salvation Army came together to simulate the response to a hurricane.

Hurricane season starts today, raising the curtain on a cast of characters and a host of contraptions that wireless phone providers promise will keep their customers chatting if a storm rolls through.

With hurricane season officially starting Monday, the National Hurricane Center offers tips in preparing for a big storm.

As the 2009 hurricane season arrives, many homeowners are finding insurance is either more expensive, or harder to get.

Hurricane season is almost here, and South Carolina officials want residents to be prepared if the big one hits. The South Carolina Emergency Management Division’s 2009 hurricane guide is in newspapers statewide starting Sunday.

Hurricanes will strike the United States this season and Americans must be prepared, federal forecasters said Thursday. They predicted nine to 14 named tropical storms this year.

Hurricane experts have scaled back their prediction for the Atlantic and now say this will be an average season with 12 named storms, including six hurricanes. They say two of them could be major.

The 2009 South Carolina Emergency Management/Hurricane Conference is set to get underway Tuesday at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center.

Hurricane Hanna isn’t directly threatening the Grand Strand right now, but people are starting to get ready, just in case. At The Home Depot in Murrells Inlet, the hurricane preparedness section of the store is stocked with everything from batteries and flashlights to tarps and generators.

A tropical storm warning has been issued for Horry and Georgetown Counties and the North Carolina coast as Tropical Storm Cristobal forms off the South Carolina/Georgia coast.  This means tropical storm conditions are possible within the next 24 hours. 

As we move deeper into hurricane season, one South Carolina county is urging its residents to register their cell phones and unlisted numbers to receive emergency alerts.

Steve Pfaff, warning coordinator and meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wilmington, N.C, said the possibility of storms reaching the Carolinas is dependent on the El Nino and La Nina factors. Neutral years produce more storms on average and the North Atlantic Oscillation brings a tropical ridge of high pressure to the Atlantic Basin, increasing chances of a storm being tracked toward the southeast corner of the United States by 60 percent.

Conditions are in place for another active hurricane season, and government scientists think 2008 will have an above-average number of storms.