From evacuating hundreds of thousands of people from the coast to live TV coverage in the shrieking wind and rain, 1989’s Hurricane Hugo might have been the first U.S. storm of the modern age. When it slammed into South Carolina just minutes before midnight on Sept. 21, 1989, Hugo’s 135 mph (217 kph) winds made it the strongest storm to hit the U.S. in 20 years and its $9.5 billion of damage made it the costliest storm in the nation’s history. The 20-foot (6.1-meter) wall of water that surged inland just north of where the eye made landfall in Charleston is still an Atlantic Coast record.
