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Hurricane Nicole brings rain and wind to Florida then weakens to tropical storm Hurricane Nicole brings rain and wind to Florida then weakens to tropical storm
(about 1 hour later)
Storm is forecast to head into Georgia and the Carolinas later Thursday and Friday, dumping heavy rain across the regionStorm is forecast to head into Georgia and the Carolinas later Thursday and Friday, dumping heavy rain across the region
Shortly after Hurricane Nicole made landfall early on Thursday along the east coast of Florida, it was downgraded to a tropical storm. But it was still battering a large area of the state with strong winds, dangerous storm surge and heavy rain. A weakening Tropical Storm Nicole doused large areas of Florida with heavy rain on Thursday, after battering the east coast overnight as a rare November hurricane.
The rare November hurricane led officials to shut down airports and theme parks and order evacuations in areas that included Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. The late-season cyclone made landfall close to Vero Beach at about 3am, delivering 75mph winds and a damaging storm surge that collapsed buildings and swept away roads as far north as Daytona Beach.
Authorities warned that storm surge could further erode beaches hit by Hurricane Ian in September. The storm was forecast to head into Georgia and the Carolinas later on Thursday and Friday, dumping heavy rain across the region. Tens of thousands of residents lost power, many in areas recovering from Hurricane Ian’s devastating rampage in September.
Nicole, which made landfall as a category 1 hurricane, weakened to having maximum sustained winds of 70mph, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. The storm was about 60 miles south-east of Orlando. It was moving west-north-west near 14mph. But Nicole, which gained category 1 hurricane strength on Wednesday afternoon over the Bahamas, just hours before its Florida landfall, lacked the intensity of its 150mph predecessor, which killed 114 people.
Tropical storm force winds extended as far as 450 miles from the center in some directions. Nicole was expected to move across central Florida on Thursday morning, possibly emerge over the far north-eastern Gulf of Mexico in the afternoon, and then move across the Florida Panhandle and Georgia. Inland, Nicole was quickly downgraded to a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of below 60mph as it headed on a diagonal north-west path towards Orlando.
A few tornadoes were possible across east-central to north-east Florida, forecasters said. Flash and urban flooding will be possible, along with renewed river rises on the St Johns River, across the Florida Peninsula on Thursday. Heavy rainfall will spread northward across portions of the south-east, eastern Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic and New England through Saturday. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said in a morning update the storm would continue to lose power but remained dangerous with heavy rainfall and inland flooding the biggest risks as its remnants turned north-east on a path through Georgia and the Carolinas and towards New York.
Large swells generated by Nicole will affect the north-western Bahamas, the east coast of Florida and much of the south-eastern United States coast over the next few days. The storm was expected to weaken into a tropical depression over Georgia on Thursday night or early Friday. “Nicole is a large storm with hazards extending well to the north of the center, outside of the forecast cone,” senior hurricane specialist Robbie Berg said in the NHC 7am bulletin.
Nicole became a hurricane on Wednesday evening as it slammed into Grand Bahama Island, having made landfall just hours earlier on Great Abaco island as a tropical storm. It was the first storm to hit the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a category 5 storm that devastated the archipelago in 2019. “These hazards will continue to affect much of the Florida peninsula and portions of the south-east US. Flooding will also be possible on Friday in the south-east through the central Appalachians, including the Blue Ridge mountains, and extending northward through eastern Ohio, west central Pennsylvania, into western New York by Friday night into Saturday.”
For Floridians, it is only the third November hurricane since record-keeping began in 1853. The previous ones were the 1935 Yankee Hurricane and Hurricane Kate in 1985. Nicole is only the third recorded hurricane to strike the US mainland in November, usually a quiet month in the tropics as the Atlantic storm season winds down. The most recent was Kate in 1985, which hit the Florida panhandle.
Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s home, was in one of the evacuation zones, built about a quarter-mile inland from the ocean. The main buildings sit on a small rise that is about 15ft above sea level and the property has survived numerous stronger hurricanes since it was built nearly a century ago. Nicole is also the eighth hurricane of an active 2022 season. Storm-weary residents along Florida’s east coast were ordered to evacuate from barrier islands and waterfront communities, including Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
The resort’s security office hung up when an Associated Press reporter asked whether the club was being evacuated and there was no sign of evacuation by Wednesday afternoon. Staff at the club, where the former president spent the day on Wednesday analyzing the midterm election results, hung up when a reporter called to ask if Trump was leaving.
There is no penalty for ignoring an evacuation order but rescue crews will not respond if it puts their members at risk. In Daytona Beach, several buildings at the shoreline were swept into the sea, and half a dozen other multi-story residential blocks already damaged by Hurricane Ian and threatened by Nicole were evacuated. Authorities went door-to-door telling people to grab possessions and leave.
Officials in Daytona Beach Shores deemed unsafe at least a half-dozen multi-story coastal residential buildings damaged by Hurricane Ian. At some locations, authorities went door-to-door telling people to grab their possessions and leave. In Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, a large section of the fishing pier collapsed into the ocean.
Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort announced they likely would not open as scheduled on Thursday. Schools in more than a dozen districts were closed on Thursday, as were theme parks in Orlando.
At a news conference Wednesday in Tallahassee, Governor Ron DeSantis said winds were the biggest concern and significant power outages could occur, but that 16,000 linemen were on standby to restore power as well as 600 guardsmen and seven search and rescue teams. The Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed an emergency declaration for dozens of counties. Joe Biden also declared an emergency in Florida, freeing federal resources and assistance to supplement state, tribal and local response efforts. Federal Emergency Management Agency personnel were still in the state responding to the aftermath of Ian.
“It will affect huge parts of the state of Florida all day,” DeSantis said. “It will affect huge parts of the state of Florida all day,” DeSantis said, urging residents to follow instructions from authorities.
Almost two dozen school districts were closing schools for the storm and 15 shelters had opened along Florida’s east coast, the governor said. Forty-five of Florida’s 67 counties were under a state of emergency declaration. “Winds are the main concern but we also expect to see heavy rains and potential for flash flooding. It will contribute to continued beach erosion in areas that have already seen erosion from Hurricane Ian.”
Warnings and watches were issued for many parts of Florida, including the south-western Gulf coastline that was devastated by Hurricane Ian, which struck as a category 4 storm. The storm destroyed homes and damaged crops, including orange groves, across the state – damage that many are still dealing with. Ian brought storm surge of up to 13ft, causing widespread destruction. Engineers at the Kennedy space center were assessing damage to Nasa’s $4.1bn Artemis moon rocket, which was left on its launchpad through the storm ahead of its scheduled blast-off on 16 November.
Nicole forced mission managers to push back the launch attempt two days but engineers were confident leaving Artemis at the pad, insisting its Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule were designed to withstand sustained winds of up to 85mph.
The Orlando Sentinel reported that sensors on the launchpad tower at Cape Canaveral recorded at least one gust of 100mph.
“Technicians will perform walkdowns and inspections at the pad to assess the status of the rocket and spacecraft as soon as practicable,” the space agency said in a statement.