Evacuees head north to the Charlotte area out of the path of Idalia

CHESTER COUNTY, S.C. (WBTV) - There are impacts in the Charlotte area from now Tropical Storm Idalia.

In South Carolina, Lancaster County schools will go to remote learning on Thursday as a precaution. Wednesday night church services have been canceled in some areas.

On Wednesday, many residents of the S.C. Lowcountry as well as those from Georgia and Florida, were on Interstate 77 headed north away from danger.

“We were coming up to Charlotte to visit our daughter and granddaughter,” Ron Landers, of Orlando, Fla., said. “We were going to leave on Wednesday but because of the hurricane we decided to get an early start.”

Landers said getting an early start kept him ahead of the worst of the weather.

“We hit 95, we hit a lot of rain, all the way up from Savannah, all the way up to 26. Once we got to 26, it let up a little bit,” he said.

“Today we’re going to Charlotte because we evacuated from South Carolina from the hurricane that’s coming, and she has a flight to catch from there,” said Lillian Mollot and Savannah Moore.

Lillian and Savannah were driving from Charleston to Charlotte. They said they could already see the impact of the storm when they left Charleston on Wednesday morning.

“It was already like flooding and most of the area, like we put her car in a parking garage and on the way there, there was like streets you couldn’t really go through. You couldn’t cross the street without like swimming in it,” they added.

“Ah, it was pretty bad, yeah, yeah, it was,” Tommy Davis said.

Davis and his wife said they weren’t fleeing the hurricane, but admitted the timing for their trip from Columbia to Pennsylvania couldn’t have been better.

“We used to live in Wilmington, N.C., and we ran from hurricanes,” Davis said.