In Charleston, the wind picked up as the storm’s eye wall — with the most damaging winds and rain — rolled through. Water filled many downtown streets, and flowed over the sea wall along East Battery Street, along the southeastern edge of this peninsular city.

Pools of standing water remained around the city into the afternoon, and black pipes snaked out of first floors, carrying water back to the street.

“We knew that a flood was coming,” said Darlene Kelly, who rode out the storm at a friend’s bed-and-breakfast in the city’s southernmost neighborhood, parts of which had been transformed by the standing water into a kind of lagoon. “Just a matter of dealing with it now.”

Still, some residents insisted they had not been too worried.

“My house has been here for 150 years or so,” said John Michael Flynn, 70. Nevertheless, he found water under his bed during the storm after his house began to leak.

The hurricane brought the highest tidal surge — more than nine feet — since Hurricane Hugo, the catastrophic 1989 storm etched deeply into this city’s consciousness. Officials urged people to say inside during the day on Saturday, although a few took to the city’s temporary canals with kayaks and even tried to ride through on bicycles.

“Now is when the frustration sets in, because the anxiousness is when the storm is coming,” said Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina, during a news conference. She added: “What I am going to ask for you is patience. Most injuries, most fatalities occur after a storm because people attempt to move in too soon.”

Parrish Rowland, a resident of a public housing complex on Charleston’s King Street, was among many in the city who did not heed that advice, and waded through waist-deep water, hoping to find something to eat.

“I just figured I’d make it my way,” said Mr. Rowland, who spoke casually, even though the water was so deep it reached halfway up the gas pumps nearby. “I like to make it my way.”