Sumter School District to have remote learning Thursday amid severe weather forecast

Sumter School District students will learn from home on Thursday, March 18, due to the “strong possibility of severe weather.”

The learning will be asynchronous, according to district spokeswoman Shelly Galloway. Hybrid learning that offers live learning with a teacher either in a classroom or virtually will resume Friday.

She said the decision was made after consulting with emergency management officials and district administration.

Lee County School District and Clarendon School Districts 1, 2 and 3 will also move to e-learning for Thursday.

Angela Bain, interim superintendent of Clarendon School District 4, which is in the process of consolidating Clarendon 1 and 3, said Wednesday afternoon a quarterly community meeting scheduled for Thursday evening over Zoom is canceled in anticipation of electricity/internet issues. It will be rescheduled for April.

The National Weather Service has high confidence the area will have severe weather on Thursday, which could include damaging winds and isolated tornadoes.

According to the NWS-Columbia office forecast for the Sumter area, there is a chance of showers and thunderstorms before 1 p.m., with the strongest storms expected between 3 and 6 p.m.

Safe places from tornadoes are storm shelters and basements, but if those aren’t available, an interior room without windows can also be protective.

According to NWS and FEMA, the worst places you can shelter are in a mobile home or vehicle or under a highway overpass. Bad options are in large open rooms like gymnasiums or in manufactured housing. Good options are in an interior room of a well-constructed home or building or in a basement. The best option is in a tornado storm shelter.

Nearly 16 million people in the Southeast could see powerful storms, according to the Associated Press, with tornado warnings issued Wednesday in Texas, Mississippi and Alabama. Storms are possible all the way from northern Texas in the west to northern Illinois and as far east as the Carolinas.

Schools, businesses and vaccine clinics are shuttering across the South.

Forecasters say at least two waves of storms are likely.