Instead, Charley will be remembered for its unusual trajectory into the Carolinas, the mess it made of Myrtle Beach and the feelings of relief it left in its wake.

"Mother Nature has spared us," Gov. Mark Sanford said during a visit to Conway after Charley had spun away. "We were very, very fortunate we didn't have the wind and storm surge Florida had."

Still, Charley had its moments.

With winds topping 90 mph along some parts of the coast, it turned garbage can lids and street signs into missiles. It knocked out power to 115,000 customers. It damaged parts of several Myrtle Beach hotels and mangled a 500-foot-long metal and plywood form on the new Cooper River bridge.

This time of year, we expect hurricanes to begin as storms off the coast of Africa near the Cape Verde islands. They arrive in the Western Hemisphere, where they can devastate Caribbean islands before curling toward the United States, sometimes taking aim at Charleston, Wilmington, N.C., or the Outer Banks.

Charley originated in the Caribbean and came in from the Gulf of Mexico, cutting through Florida like a giant runaway circular saw. As it neared the Carolinas, itself caught between two other weather patterns -- an upper level trough to the west and an area of high pressure to the east.

These weather systems would decide where Charley went.

'GUESSWORK AND LUCK'

On Friday, officials here began to get nervous. Forecasters were predicting Charley might run up Interstate 95, exposing Charleston to its fearsome northeast side. At 3 p.m. Friday, officials huddled in the Charleston County Emergency Operation's Center, a windowless room full of phones and empty soda cans.

"We just want you to realize there's a lot of uncertainty in what this storm is going to do," Dennis Clark, the emergency preparedness director, told reporters.

Behind the scenes, Sanford and other area leaders were contemplating a mandatory evacuation order for Charleston County. Gov. Sanford had already issued one for parts of Georgetown and Horry counties.

It was a tough call. Lives could be put in jeopardy if the storm worsened. But an unneeded evacuation could create new problems, such as clogged roads and bumper stickers calling for the governor's impeachment, as happened after Floyd.

After talking with his staff, Charleston County Administrator Roland Windham lobbied for a voluntary evacuation. "I was questioning myself from that point on," he said. "Did I do the right thing? While you depend on technology, you also know it's not perfected. There's guesswork involved. Guesswork and luck."

The call turned out to be a good one. The trough to the west ended up prevailing over the high-pressure system to the east, Instead of spinning up I-95, Charley was pushed to the coast.

'A GOOD LITTLE WIND'

Its spiraling arms began to brush the Carolina coast after sunrise. At about 8 a.m., a dense, wind-driven band of rain hit Charleston Harbor.

Sam Payne was still in bed at his home in Mount Pleasant when he heard a thump.

He got up and found a huge oak had fallen through his roof and onto his neighbor's house. "What a way to start a Saturday," he said.

At about the same time, winds blasted the old Cooper River bridges, creating an unusual aerodynamic effect on a section of the new bridge. A 500-foot-long metal and plywood mold for concrete peeled back from the force. Police closed the old bridges for four hours while crews cleaned up.

"It must have been a pretty good little wind that hit it," said Wade Watson, project manager for Palmetto Bridge Constructors.

The highest wind recorded downtown was 54 mph in Waterfront Park.

It was worse to the north with 64 mph on the Isle of Palms, gusts in the 70s in McClellanville and 91 mph on Surfside Beach.

With 85 mph winds, the storm center cut into South Carolina near the Georgetown-Charleston county line, north of McClellanville.

"I'm nervous," said clam farmer Bob Baldwin, whose boat was tossed a mile from the docks in 1989's Hurricane Hugo. "We were expecting it to go inland, where it would lose a lot of steam, not head back over water where it could gather strength again."

The storm seemed to pick up even more steam as it moved toward Georgetown, where streets flooded and winds bent a gas station fuel pump at a 20-degree angle. Nearby, gusts tossed an unsecured trailer onto the side of a pickup truck. At another gas station, a roof over the pumps was pulled to the ground, twisting its steel supports. Two boats were yanked from their mooring in the Sampit River and driven into a nearby marsh.

In Myrtle Beach, the rain went horizontal at about 10:30 a.m. Monstrous waves crashed against the shore just feet from beachfront buildings. Power lines snapped. Metal street signs tore from their fastenings and hurtled down the street at slow-moving vehicles. In the center of Myrtle Beach, the clock at the pavilion fell.

At the Schooner II Beach and Racquet Club on Ocean Boulevard, wind ripped out a five-story high chunk of stucco, wood and insulation, spraying debris westward for two blocks.

The Poindexter Ocean Front Resort sustained significant damage to its balconies and roof, with the "r" from the Poindexter sign bending backward in the wind.

At the Holiday Sands North hotel, a large trashcan flew into a parked mini-van, smashing the vehicle's rear window. A large window shattered, and a ceiling caved in.

Dan Bell, 37, a supervisor at the Firebird Motor Inn, was caught off-guard by the winds. "We were on the fourth floor of the motel, and I said, 'Wow, this is bad. This is really bad.' "

'BACK TO NORMAL'

Charley came and left quickly.

By 9 a.m. in Charleston, the sky was a patchwork of cottony clouds and blue sky -- the soft tropical blue hurricanes often leave behind.

By 10:30 a.m., only 184 people were left at shelters in Charleston County, and they were clearing out fast, some on CARTA buses.

Power company crews were well on their way to restoring power in Mount Pleasant and throughout the region.

At noon, Windham, the county administrator, gazed up at one of the seven televisions in the command center and laughed. "You know things are back to normal when the Power Rangers are on."

Turning serious, he said the county was considering how to help communities in Florida.

"I really believe the legacy of this storm is going to be the damage in Florida. We have to look past the stress that occupied us over the past few days and think about what happened there."

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