Charleston Breaks a 133-Year Rain Record on the Celtics' First Day of Camp at The Citadel

The short version: On Sunday, October 4, Charleston, South Carolina recorded 3.64 inches of rain — breaking a single-day record that had stood for 133 years. It happened to be the first day of the Boston Celtics' training camp at The Citadel, the team's first road camp in nearly a decade. The golf plans did not survive.

Charleston has seen a lot of weather in 133 years. Hurricanes, tropical storms, the kind of summer downpours that send tourists sprinting for cover on King Street. But the city had never seen a day quite like October 4, 2026 — at least not on the books. When the rain gauges were read, the total came to 3.64 inches in a single day, shattering the old mark of 2.51 inches set in 1893. One hundred thirty-three years of records, gone in a Sunday.

And the Boston Celtics picked that exact weekend to bring training camp to town.

For the first time in nearly a decade, the Celtics are holding a portion of preseason camp on the road — at The Citadel, in Charleston, working out at the McAllister Field House. The team arrived Saturday afternoon to a rainy Charleston, and began camp Sunday morning. Head coach Joe Mazzulla said the point was to get away and bond with a roster full of new faces. "It's really been 10 years since we did it, a bunch of new guys, so just wanted to really take a step back, get away, and vibe with each other in a different environment," Mazzulla said earlier in the week. The different environment turned out to be a monsoon.

The rain didn't touch the actual basketball. The Celtics practice indoors, and Mazzulla was quick to point that out. "We play indoors, practice indoors," he said. "At the end of the day, it may impact some of the extracurricular stuff, which also — it shouldn't. We've gotten everything we've needed to get out of Charleston so far, and we got two more days to do it."

It was the extracurricular stuff that took the hit. At dinner on Sunday, players' phones lit up with flash flood warnings. At times the downpour was so intense it was almost painful to step outside. The forecast had rain running from Saturday afternoon, when the team arrived, all the way through Tuesday — their last day of camp.

"It's been raining a lot," said Mitchell Robinson, who has responded the way any reasonable person would: by turning to TikTok for recommendations on what to do in Charleston when the sky won't stop.

The real casualties were the golfers. Payton Pritchard is a big South Carolina golf fan, and he and Mike Conley — his go-to golf and workout buddy — had plans. The rain had other ideas. Conley bowed out. Pritchard did not go quietly.

"He's texting me in the middle of a flood warning, saying, 'Hey, we can still get out there. It's just sprinkling,'" Conley said. "I'm like, 'Bro, it's not happening today.'"

Pritchard's verdict: "Mike bailed."

Pritchard, to his credit, has the full support of his head coach — because Joe Mazzulla, it turns out, is a self-professed rain enthusiast. Mazzulla doesn't think the weather should stop anybody from anything. "He said you got to prove how much you love something," Conley recalled Mazzulla saying. "If you don't play in the rain, you don't physically love it — and I'm about to see how many guys on this team truly love what they do."

Mazzulla, asked directly about the rain: "I do like the rain. Yeah, it's nice."

So the Celtics' first road camp in ten years is doubling as a team-building exercise in precipitation. New player development coaches are getting their first look at the roster — Conley and Pritchard working with God Shamgod Jr., Paul George with Amile Jefferson, Mitchell Robinson with Nana Foulland — while Jayson Tatum continues his work with assistant coach Tony Dobbins coming off the Achilles recovery. All of it happening to the soundtrack of historic rainfall.

Off the court, the team is doing what any group of twentysomethings does on a work trip: finding the local spots. Derrick White told the Celtics Insiders podcast the squad invaded a Charleston sports bar for NFL Sunday, the kind of story that writes itself — an entire NBA roster walking into a neighborhood bar while the rain hammered down outside. Between the bar, the TikTok restaurant hunts, and Mazzulla's rain-or-shine golf doctrine, this camp is building the kind of shared lore that actually matters in May and June.

There's something fitting about it. A franchise with 18 championships doesn't get rattled by weather. The record books in Charleston will remember October 4, 2026, as the day 133 years of rainfall history got washed away. The Celtics will remember it as the day camp started — and the day Payton Pritchard learned that some guys just won't golf in a flood warning.

Previously's NBA desk follows the Celtics all season. For more hoops, see the sports hub.