8 Habits Northern Transplants Pick Up in South Carolina Within a Year

Moving south means more than trading snow boots for flip-flops.

Before long, many transplants catch themselves living a lot like their native South Carolinian neighbors.

Here are the habits newcomers from up North tend to pick up within a year.

1. Buying Liquor Before Sunday

Many newcomers learn to buy liquor before Sunday the hard way.

A retail liquor store license covers sales of sealed liquor and wine to go, according to the South Carolina Department of Revenue.

Those sales can happen Monday through Saturday only, from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m.

A retail liquor store may not operate on Sunday under any circumstances.

That puts the bottle for your cookout in your cart by 7 p.m. Saturday.

A 2025 House bill would let a county or city that votes yes allow Sunday liquor store sales from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

The State House website’s history for that bill ends in February 2025, as of late September 2026.

2. Saying Bless Your Heart

The Post and Courier‘s 2025 guide to speaking South Carolinian says bless your heart can mean the speaker is looking down on you.

Some transplants start saying bless your heart before they’ve learned what it can mean.

Hosepipe is the local word for a garden hose.

And “from off” means a person who isn’t from South Carolina, and that includes you.

3. Checking the Heat Index

Checking the heat index means looking at what the National Weather Service defines as how hot it feels once humidity is added to the air temperature.

Full sunshine can add up to 15 degrees to that number.

The Weather Service office in Columbia issues a Heat Advisory when the heat index reaches 108 to 112 for at least two hours.

For example, 96 degrees at 65 percent humidity feels like 121.

An Excessive Heat Warning starts at a heat index of 113 or higher for the same stretch.

Lots of newcomers check that number before they plan an afternoon outside.

Your lawn can wait.

4. Ordering Sweet Tea

Sweet tea is the drink a lot of newcomers end up ordering.

A 1995 law names tea grown in South Carolina the state’s official hospitality beverage.

The law never mentions sugar, so if you order it sweet, you’re following a custom, not the statute.

5. Watching the Tide Forecast

Watching the tide forecast matters in Charleston, where the National Weather Service calls a tide of 7.0 feet on the harbor gauge a minor flood.

A moderate flood starts at 7.5 feet, and a major flood at 8.0.

The Weather Service's coastal flood page lists 1,433 flood events at or above 7.0 feet since 1921, and 272 of them came in October, more than in any other month.

52 of them came in 2025, including 18 in October.

The page links to the tide forecast for Charleston Harbor, so you can check it before you head out.

Many coastal transplants make a habit of it.

NOAA says high tide flooding is sometimes called sunny day flooding, and The Post and Courier uses that term for Charleston's tidal floods.

Its 2025 flooding report says Charleston averaged one sunny day flood per week.

6. Buying Boiled Peanuts

The state Department of Agriculture says you can buy boiled peanuts ladled out of a crock pot in a gas station.

You can also get them in a brown paper bag from a roadside vendor.

Lawmakers made boiled peanuts the official state snack food in 2006.

South Carolina farmers typically start harvesting green peanuts in July.

Some transplants end up pulling over for a bag.

Bring napkins.

7. Running a Dehumidifier

Running a dehumidifier may help with house dust mites, which Clemson Cooperative Extension says need about 70 percent relative humidity or higher.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recommends keeping indoor humidity below 60 percent, ideally between 30 and 50 percent.

If your house runs above that range, air conditioners and dehumidifiers are tools to use when needed.

Lots of newcomers end up running a dehumidifier.

You can check your indoor humidity with a meter, which the EPA says costs $10 to $50 at hardware stores.

If you dry a wet spot within 24 to 48 hours, mold usually won't grow.

8. Knowing Your Evacuation Zone

Do you know which evacuation zone your address is in?

Many coastal newcomers make a point of knowing theirs.

The South Carolina Emergency Management Division's Know Your Zone map covers eight coastal counties: Beaufort, Berkeley, Charleston, Colleton, Dorchester, Georgetown, Horry and Jasper.

State and local authorities will announce evacuations by those predesignated zones, so you can look yours up by address on the map.