Winters in So Carolina???

starbride34

My son has joined the army and he goes to boot camp at Fort Jackson in So Carolina. He will be there from the end of Oct to sometime in January, and I'm just wondering how cold the winters get back there. Any info???

ama1221

Since I'm going to say this...you can bet that this winter its going to be freakishly cold and it will snow 20 times.

When I lived in Columbia, it was very mild.  Maybe high 30's.  It maybe snows/ices once during the winter.  There's also always an 80 degree week in January (seriously).

kimnelson09

I'm in Columbia and have been for the past 2 and a half years.  Winters here are usually warm (40-50s).  We get a few freakishly cold days, but keep in mind that "freakishly cold" means 25-30 here.  I don't think we had a single snowfall over an inch this year.  Columbia also generally misses out on the ice storms that the Upstate gets. 

As the pp said, there have been times when it was 70 degrees in January, too.

For what it's worth, I'm an SC native (from the Upstate) and I didn't even own a proper winter coat until I moved to Paris to study. 

CarolinaGirl83

Ditto pp... the only reason I have a winter coat is to go skiing in NC or WV!  When it does snow, it is usually melted by lunchtime the next day.

sctiger

Columbia will have a milder winter.  I still think it gets too cold though.  There will be a few nights when it will get in the teens and quite a few 30-something-degree days.  Winters are pretty unpredictable.  It can snow one week, and be 80 the next.  In January.  This year we had snow in the upstate at the beginning of March.  You will need a heavy coat here, trust me!  It's not tropical weather like some people like to think.

PunkyBooster

We are moving from Boston-Charleston and basically packed all winter coats and boots into a plastic storage bin for storage closets. I get cold really easily though, we visited in April and I needed sweaters at night. I'm a freak though.