Hurricane Nicole slammed into Florida Thursday, battering a big area of the state that’s still recovering from the historic devastation of Hurricane Ian just six weeks ago — despite being downgraded to a tropical storm after making landfall.
The rare November hurricane — which already led to a state of emergency being declared in Florida, with evacuations and 600 National Guards on the ready — made landfall just south of Vero Beach, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said at 3 a.m.
It was downgraded an hour later, with the middle warning that it was still wreaking havoc with “strong winds, dangerous storm surge and waves, and heavy rains” across a big area of the already battered state.
“A dangerous storm surge is predicted” across much of the state in addition to “portions of coastal Georgia,” the weather center warned in its latest update at 4 a.m.
“The storm surge will probably be accompanied by large and damaging waves along the Atlantic coast.”
Adding to the danger, Nicole “is a big storm with hazards extending well to the north of the middle, outside of the forecast zone,” with flash flooding warnings across much of the southeast US.
Tropical storm force winds were recorded as extending so far as 450 miles from the middle, which early Thursday was about 60 miles southeast of Orlando.
Nicole is predicted to weaken right into a tropical depression over Georgia on Thursday night or early Friday. Nevertheless, the heavy rainfall is prone to remain whilst Nicole is forecast to pass western Recent York late Friday and into Saturday, the middle said.
The storm struck after the historic, wide-ranging devastation of Ian in late September, which killed greater than 140 people. The most recent storm is threatening to further damage hard-hit areas and further erode many beaches hit by Hurricane Ian.
For storm-weary Floridians, it is just the third November hurricane to hit their shores since recordkeeping began in 1853. The previous ones were the 1935 Yankee Hurricane and Hurricane Kate in 1985.
A hurricane warning had been posted for a 240-mile coastal stretch that included the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, where NASA’s latest moon rocket stood exposed to the weather and anchored to its launch pad to ride out the storm.
Officials had already shut down airports and theme parks and ordered extensive evacuations.
That included one in the world that’s home to former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, which is a couple of quarter-mile inland from the ocean.
The essential buildings sit on a small rise that’s about 15 feet above sea level, and the property has survived quite a few stronger hurricanes because it was built nearly a century ago.
There have been no signs that it was being evacuated, which might not end in penalties. Nevertheless, rescue crews won’t respond in evacuation zones.
Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 45 of Florida’s 67 counties, with “16,000 linemen staged, 600 guardsmen activated, and seven Urban Search and Rescue teams on standby to deploy.”
He warned of potential significant power outages just weeks after thousands and thousands were left at midnight by Ian, which caused an estimated $60 billion in damage.
“It would affect huge parts of the state of Florida all day,” DeSantis said.
Even before reaching hurricane strength, the storm unleashed “extensive flooding” across much of the Bahamas, including the islands of Grand Bahama, Eleuthera, Andros and the Abacos.
It was declared a hurricane on Wednesday evening because it made its first landfall on Grand Bahama island within the northwestern corner of the Atlantic West Indies archipelago nation.
With Post wires
