Chantal brings heavy rain and rough surf

Storm chaser Aaron Rigsby is in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where a tropical storm and gusty winds have left the beaches desolate.

Transcript

00:00for a closer look at what's going on we're joined now by storm chaser aaron rigsby

00:03he's live in myrtle beach this morning aaron we talked to you last hour what's changed since then

00:08yeah good morning guys so the thing that's changed the most is that it's the winds are

00:15still a little bit rowdy but they have started to calm down a little bit over the last hour

00:20which is good news they're still gusting upwards of 30 to 35 miles an hour versus earlier where

00:25they were gusting as high as 60 miles an hour but as you can probably tell behind me it's not too

00:30often that you see myrtle beach look like this i mean it is a complete ghost town which is good news

00:36it means a lot of the folks were heeding those warnings taking today to just kind of relax let

00:41the storm pass through and eventually get back to their summertime vacation i did talk to a few folks

00:46yesterday and they were at least thankful that the storm waited until after the 4th of july so they

00:51can enjoy their fireworks in the prime time of their vacation before chantel moved on shore

00:56i guess in that sense florida kind of had the worst end of the deal ruining the fourth but

01:01uh yeah probably a lot of uno games going on i would imagine a lot of great competitions there

01:06have you seen much in the way it seems like there's been a lot of trash cans blowing around

01:11certainly not much in the way of power outages or damage at all right aaron

01:14yeah it's been relatively minor a lot of those loose objects that weren't tied down had gotten

01:21blown into the streets lots of trash cans i did see a couple of appear to be telephone wires hanging

01:26down from some of those gusty winds and i did actually personally see a few power flashes from

01:31transformers exploding from some of those wind gusts so there are going to be at least a few folks here

01:36in the dark this morning but the good news is that i did see the power crews actively working during

01:41the storm so those areas that did lose power they were jumping right on that on standby ready to get

01:47that power restored at a moment's notice now one thing to mention today is that there's still a very

01:52dangerous rip current threat the beaches for swimming have been closed for the last 48 hours

01:58yesterday i did see some folks still risking it and going out there but that's not the case today

02:02and hopefully that train continues until this storm system can push off to the northeast and these

02:07beaches can settle down a little bit and a lot of those folks can get out to the beach and enjoy that

02:11water yeah hopefully a lot of people taking the advice from officials there now aaron we can see

02:19the ocean behind you obviously we can see you're on the beach nobody's there but you mentioned earlier

02:24there's still a decent number of tourists that at least are in town for the holiday weekend

02:29yeah absolutely i mean even yesterday afternoon before the storm really started to ramp up there was a

02:36lot of folks out still enjoying their evening a lot of folks were hitting the night out on the town

02:41i think kind of trying to get those last bit a few hours of relatively nice weather before the

02:46storm impacted the area and it's been a noticeable it's been a noticeable difference today on the

02:52amount of folks that were out driving around yesterday versus today many of these hotels are

02:57still full with their parking lots of the vehicles still there so a lot of the folks are still hunkering

03:02down now as the storm moves off to the northeast things might actually get a little bit sunny a little bit

03:07later today so i'm expecting a lot of those folks to eventually make their way out and see if they

03:12can salvage some of their day left but it is really important to talk about how important it is not to

03:17get in the water today those rift currents are what we pretty much refer to as silent killers you cannot

03:22see them and once they pull you out there is no getting back in so definitely heed those warnings

03:27if the folks watching do head out this evening as the weather slowly starts to improve as the day

03:33progresses now some important advice there storm chaser aaron rigsby thanks for joining us