Sprawling Tropical Storm Nicole drenching Florida, Georgia
Published:Thursday | November 10, 2022 | 8:59 AM
MIAMI (AP) — Nicole hit Florida's east coast as a hurricane Thursday and remains such a sprawling tropical storm that it has covered nearly the entire state while reaching into Georgia, the Carolinas and Alabama.
A large area of the weather-weary peninsula was being lashed by strong winds and heavy rain, with a damaging ocean surge in a few coastal areas.
The rare November hurricane prompted officials to shut down airports and theme parks and order evacuations in areas that included former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.
Authorities warned that Nicole's storm surge could further erode many beaches hit by Hurricane Ian in September.
Tropical storm force winds extended as far as 450 miles (720 kilometres) from the centre in some directions as Nicole turned northward over central Florida Thursday morning. It could briefly emerge over the northeastern corner of the Gulf of Mexico Thursday afternoon before moving over the Florida Panhandle and Georgia, forecasters said.
Robbie Berg, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami advised people to understand that hazards from Tropical Storm Nicole “will exist across the state of Florida today.”
The storm left south Florida sunny and calm as it moved north, could dump as much as 6 inches (15 centimetres) of rain over Blue Ridge Mountains by Friday, forecasters said.
Nicole made landfall as a Category One hurricane around Vero Beach at about 3 a.m. Thursday before its maximum sustained winds dropped to 60 mph (100 kph), the Miami-based center said.
The storm was centred about 30 miles (50 kilometres) southeast of Orlando. It was moving west-northwest near 14 mph (22 kph).
Large swells generated by Nicole will affect the northwestern Bahamas, the east coast of Florida, and much of the southeastern 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 became a hurricane 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 Five storm that devastated the archipelago in 2019.
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