AHEAD OF THE STORM

THE WEATHER OUTLOOK FOR THE LOW COUNTRY OF SOUTH CAROLINA LOOKED UNSETTLING. Alan Walters, charged with protecting more than 9,000 students as the executive director of safety for the Georgetown County school district there, pored over the forecasts. Just a few weeks into the 2015 school year, he was facing the possibility of a dangerous storm. With computer forecast models literally all over the map in projecting where the storm—soon to become Hurricane Joaquin—would go, Walters was left to weigh the options on his own. The choice, as ever, was between sounding the alarm and sounding unduly alarmed. Closing schools early meant safe kids and freed-up school buildings and buses for evacuation use. But it also could cause unnecessary distress, and deprive low-income students of the breakfast and lunch they would have had at school if the storm didn’t hit. By Thursday, Oct. 1, with heavy rains imminent but no clear picture of whether Joaquin would hit the coast, Walters and the superintendent made a call: no school on Friday.

Joaquin veered away but fed massive amounts of moisture to another system hovering over the Southeast. The unusual configuration dumped a staggering amount of rain—more than 20 inches—sending Georgetown County’s five rivers surging over their banks, making roads impassable and isolating communities. Schools remained closed for seven days. “We had to send teachers in by boat, and we commandeered a church for classes,” Walters says. Ultimately, the flooding was blamed for 19 fatalities and nearly $1.5 billion in damages in South Carolina.

So Walters and other officials made the right call, but with little time to spare. The uncertain forecasts had them scrambling, and Walters knows well the