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Heavy rain and winds along West Coast leave thousands without power, with more storms expected
CNN
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A strong storm system bringing heavy rain, mountain snow and hurricane-force wind gusts to much of the drought-parched western United States has left more than 115,000 customers without power as the region braces for more wet, blustery weather in coming days.
All 11 Western states are under winter weather alerts Wednesday, with about half a million people along the higher elevations of the Rockies under high wind alerts as gusts could reach Category 1 hurricane strength. Already, electricity has been knocked out in parts of Oregon, Washington and California, according to PowerOutage.us.
The region is being inundated by an atmospheric river – a long, narrow region in the atmosphere that can carry moisture thousands of miles – as much of the eastern US recovers from a deadly winter storm that left wide swaths of the country under dangerously cold temperatures.
In the West, an initial round of lashing rain, wind and snow has moved inland and is set Wednesday to engulf inter-mountain areas. While coastal states may experience a brief lull on Wednesday, more rounds of rain and snow are predicted to sweep onshore at the end of the week.
Avalanche alerts have been issued for parts of Idaho, Colorado, Montana and California due to strong winds combined with heavy snowfall.
Winds on Tuesday whipped above 100 mph in some cities, reaching Category 2 hurricane levels. A gust of 107 mph was reported in Mount Hood, Oregon, and a 104-mph gust was recorded in North Bonneville, Washington. Wind speeds between 80 and 90 mph were reported Tuesday in several cities, including a gust of 90 mph in Walker, California.
“This unsettled weather pattern is expected to linger into the upcoming weekend as well,” the National Weather Center said.
Several more rounds of moisture will inundate the West this week, bringing temporary relief to a region suffering under prolonged drought conditions.
California’s snowpack could benefit from the storms. The critical source of water that has suffered under severe drought was running more than 150% of normal levels late last week, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
Now, widespread rainfall totals of 2 to 4 inches are expected across the region through Sunday, with isolated areas receiving up to 6 inches. Northern California could see rainfall up to 7 inches, with isolated higher amounts.
The first wave is impacting parts of Southern California and the Four Corners region that includes parts of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. Low elevation rainfall and high elevation snowfall will move out of California by late Wednesday morning and remain in the Four Corners area until Thursday.
The avalanche alerts are in effect as lower elevations across the West could see five-day snowfall totals of 2 to 8 inches, with some areas getting as much as a foot. More mountainous high elevations are forecast to receive 1 to 3 feet of snowfall, with isolated areas getting over 3 feet.
Hurricane Nicole: Beachfront homes in small Florida community washed away
CNN
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Trip Valigorsky’s beachfront home in a tight-knit community in Volusia County, Florida had been in his family for nearly 15 years before it was washed away this week, as the dangerous storm surge and powerful winds caused by Hurricane Nicole swept across Florida.
“This home was my grandma’s favorite place,” Valigorsky told CNN. “Some of the best memories with her were here.”
Valigorksy is just one of many residents in the beachfront neighborhood of Wilbur-By-The-Sea whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the storm.
In Volusia County, at least 49 beachfront properties, including hotels and condos, have been deemed “unsafe” in the aftermath of Nicole, which hit Florida’s eastern coast south of Vero Beach as a Category 1 hurricane early Thursday before weakening into a tropical storm and eventually becoming a post-tropical cyclone Friday afternoon.
Video from the county shows homes crumbling, reduced to wreckage, as Nicole’s waves erode the coastline. Separate video shows the county’s beach safety office collapsing into the rising water.
Sea level in this part of Florida has risen more than a foot in the past 100 years, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and most of that rise has occurred in the past three decades.
Scientists and researchers have long warned that sea level rise is leading to more erosion and high-tide flooding — particularly during extreme coastal storms.
This has put even more stress on seawalls that are meant to protect coastal communities from high waves and water levels, many of which were destroyed this week by the storm surge. One seawall that was put up on Tuesday, which Valigorsky and his neighbors had hoped would protect their properties from damage, crumbled into the ocean by Wednesday, he said.
“It was stressful wondering if it would fall, and here we are,” Valigorsky said.
On Wednesday morning, Valigorsky decided to grab his essential belongings and his dog to evacuate the area as he watched the storm become even more severe. By the time he returned, all that remained of his home was the garage and the front foyer.
As his community begins to rebuild their neighborhood in the aftermath of Nicole, Valigorsky said he plans to reconstruct his home alongside his neighbors who also lost theirs.
Another resident, Phil Martin, lost his entire home during the hurricane this week.
“It was the most devastating thing to see,” Martin said. “We didn’t think it would be this bad.”
Martin said he has lived in the area for two years and the home was his permanent residence where he spent time with his children and grandchildren, playing soccer in the backyard or walking down to the beach.
“There’s no politics at the beach, everyone gets along,” Martin said, adding that his community and those surrounding Wilbur-By-The-Sea are keeping his spirits high.
“Everything happened very fast with this one,” he said. “But we’re going to rebuild, we’ve got this.”
Just six weeks ago, Hurricane Ian’s storm surge eroded parts of Florida’s eastern coast, hitting the area where a seawall was built behind Martin’s home as well as his neighbors’. Now, he said, that seawall is gone.
The back-to-back nature of storms is making seawalls – which are already aging – more vulnerable, Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, previously told CNN.
“It doesn’t really take a strong storm – you just need high tides or storm-agitated tides to wash away or put extra stress on the walls,” he said. “Having these two storms six weeks apart, if you don’t give places any time to repair or replenish, each storm definitely leaves its mark.”
Arlisa Payne, who has been a resident of the beachfront community for most of her life, told CNN affiliate Spectrum News 13 that she’s “never seen anything like this” after assessing the damage caused by Hurricane Nicole.
Although her home survived the storm, Payne said that she is concerned the seawall in front of her house is at risk of collapsing.
The mother of four children said many of her neighbor’s homes were not damaged by Hurricane Ian but they were hit hard by Nicole, making it difficult for the community to prepare for such storms.
“I think this caught a lot of people off guard,” she said. “How do you prepare for this? People can’t prepare for it.”
Hurricane Nicole: Florida picks up after storm kills at least 5 and leaves ‘unprecedented’ damage to Daytona-area coastline
CNN
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As Nicole threatens the Carolinas and Virginia on Friday with tornadoes and flooding, Floridians – many still recovering from Hurricane Ian – are picking up the pieces after this week’s storm killed at least five people and ripped apart buildings with its dangerous storm surge and powerful winds.
In Volusia County, Florida, at least 49 beachfront properties, including hotels and condos, have been deemed “unsafe” in the aftermath of Nicole, which hit Florida’s eastern coast south of Vero Beach as a Category 1 hurricane early Thursday before weakening into a tropical storm and eventually becoming a post-tropical cyclone Friday afternoon.
“The structural damage along our coastline is unprecedented,” Volusia County Manager George Recktenwald said in a news conference, adding more buildings will likely be identified as compromised.
As Nicole turns to the northeast, a tornado watch is in effect for portions of northeastern North Carolina, central, eastern and southeast Virginia until 6 p.m. Friday, according to the National Weather Service.
Track Nicole here >>
As the storm – the first hurricane to hit the US in November in nearly 40 years – walloped Florida, Ian-battered coastal buildings were compromised even more by coastal erosion. Deputies went door to door Wednesday evacuating residents from structurally unsound buildings in Volusia County ahead of Nicole’s arrival.
In Wilbur-By-The-Sea – a barrier island community off Daytona Beach – 22 homes were evacuated in advance after officials deemed them unsafe.
Then amid Nicole, some oceanfront homes collapsed into the ocean.
Trip Valigorsky unlocked the front door to his home to see a gaping hole leading to crashing ocean waves where his living room had once stood. Pointing to where the television and sofa used to be, he told CNN affiliate WKMG he was in shock.
“I was here Tuesday night and I kind of watched the wall deteriorate, and then I woke up Wednesday morning and the wall was completely gone, so I started evacuating,” Valigorsky said. “And now here we are.”
Nicole also pushed a huge volume of water onshore, tearing through infrastructure already strained by Ian.
Storm surge peaked Thursday morning at around 6 feet, sending rising ocean water to streets. A lower surge also pushed ashore on top of exceptionally high tides associated with this week’s full moon, keeping water levels high longer.
Homes nearly hung off cliffs and Daytona Beach hotels crumbled into the ocean in the storm’s aftermath, drone video showed.
“The devastation is almost impossible to comprehend. Imagine watching your home collapse into the ocean,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood tweeted.
Nicole is weakening as it passes Georgia and heads into the Carolinas, but it still poses dangers, CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen said.
The tornado watch in effect Friday covers about 4.2 million people, including Virginia Beach and areas just south of Washington, DC.
Isolated damaging wind gusts to 70 mph are also possible and more than 12 million people are under wind alerts from Georgia into the Carolinas.
This system is expected to produce an additional 1 to 3 inches of rain across the central Appalachians, mid-Atlantic, and New England through Saturday morning, before pushing away from the US East Coast, according to the US Weather Prediction Center.
As remnants of Nicole race northward Friday through Saturday, its tropical moisture will be absorbed by a separate cold front, which delivered blizzard conditions across the northern Plains, CNN Meteorologist Derek Van Dam said.
Heavy rain and gusty winds in excess of 30 mph will make traveling along the Interstate 95 corridor tricky. Meanwhile, airline travel will likely be disrupted at many East Coast airports as the storm moves through.
As the colossal storm approached Florida, schools and universities closed, hundreds of flights were canceled, airports halted operations and some coastal residents were evacuated.
After Nicole passed through, streets were left flooded, roads and homes were damaged, and thousands were without power. More than 300,000 customers in Florida were affected by outages earlier; the number had fallen by late Friday morning to about 14,000, according to PowerOutage.us.
Two people died after being “electrocuted by a downed power line” in Orange County, the sheriff’s office said in a news release. Two additional deaths are being investigated as possibly storm-related following a fatal car accident, according to Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings.
Also killed was a 68-year-old Port Canaveral man who had been on a yacht early Thursday morning as it was “being battered by the waves and the dock,” the Cocoa Police Department said. After his wife called 911 to report her husband was in distress, rescuers took the couple to a hospital. He was later pronounced deceased, police said, adding the cause of death isn’t yet determined.
Downed power lines in flooded streets are among a multitude of hazards residents must maneuver in the hurricane’s wake as they return to their homes, and crews work to clear debris from roadways and conduct emergency repairs to washed out roads.
NASA inspects Artemis I rocket after Hurricane Nicole
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The Artemis I moon rocket is still standing after battling Hurricane Nicole, which made landfall as a Category 1 storm roughly 70 miles south from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida overnight. The $4.1 billion rocket rode out the storm while sitting exposed on its launchpad.
It’s not yet clear how the hurricane affected the rocket, called the Space Launch System, or the Orion spacecraft that’s currently sitting atop it, but initial inspections have begun.
“Our team is conducting initial visual check-outs of the rocket, spacecraft, and ground system equipment with the cameras at the launchpad. Camera inspections show very minor damage such as loose caulk and tears in weather coverings. The team will conduct additional onsite walk down inspections on the vehicle soon,” according to a Thursday afternoon statement from Jim Free, associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate.
“Teams monitored SLS and Orion remotely during the storm and successfully maintained purges and other essential support,” the statement reads.
Leading up to Hurricane Nicole’s landfall, wind gusts and potential debris were concerns for the Artemis I mission team. The rocket is designed to withstand 85 mile-per-hour (74.4-knot) winds with some margin, NASA officials noted in a Tuesday statement.
“While wind sensors at the launch pad detected peak wind gusts up to 82 miles per hour (71 knots) at the 60-foot level, this is within the rocket’s capability. We anticipate clearing the vehicle for those conditions shortly,” Free said.
But Thursday evening, a NASA spokesperson confirmed to CNN that sensors at the 467-foot (142-meter) level of the lightning towers indicated that the wind peak did reach up to 100 miles per hour (87 knots) at that location.
At 5:15 a.m. ET Thursday, sensors located on one of the lightning towers surrounding the rocket also clocked wind speeds of 75 miles per hour (65 knots), with gusts as high as 100 miles per hour (87 knots). Data from some of the sensors, which are owned by NASA and the US Space Force, is available on the National Weather Service’s website.
That website says the sensor producing that data is 7 feet (2 meters) off the ground. However, a meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s Melbourne, Florida, forecast office told CNN that is inaccurate. The actual height of the sensor is 230 feet (70 meters), which should provide accurate readings for the types of winds the 322-foot-tall (98-meter-tall) rocket endured.
NASA did not respond to requests for comment about that detail on Thursday.
The space agency decided to roll the SLS rocket out to its launchpad last week as the storm was still an unnamed system brewing off the East Coast. At the time, officials had been expecting the storm to bring sustained winds of around 29 miles per hour (25 knots) with gusts of up to 46 miles per hour (40 knots). Those were deemed to be well within the predetermined limits of what the rocket can withstand, according to comments from Mark Burger, a launch weather officer with the US Space Force’s 45th Weather Squadron, at a NASA news conference on November 3.
“The National Hurricane Center just has a 30% chance of it becoming a named storm,” Burger said at the news conference. “However, that being said, the models are very consistent on developing some sort of a low pressure.”
But the storm did grow into a named system on Monday, three days after the rocket was rolled out to the launchpad.
“We took the decision to keep Orion and SLS at the launch pad very seriously, reviewing the data in front of us and making the best decision possible with high uncertainty in prediction the weather four days out,” according to the Thursday statement from Free. “With the unexpected change to the forecast, returning to the Vehicle Assembly Building was deemed to be too risky in high winds, and the team decided the launch pad was the safest place for the rocket to weather the storm.”
Transporting the mega moon rocket between the launchpad and the Vehicle Assembly Building is no small feat. It usually takes about three days of preparations before the maneuver can occur, and there are a limited number of rollbacks the mission team can perform. The slow 4-mile (6.4-kilometer) ride aboard an Apollo-era giant NASA crawler takes 10 to 12 hours in favorable conditions. If the rocket had to be rolled back as a storm approached, it could only handle sustained winds less than 46 miles per hour (40 knots).
The storm’s strength was unusual, with Nicole becoming the first hurricane to strike the United States in November in nearly 40 years.
To prepare for the storm, NASA said in a statement Tuesday that its teams powered down the Orion spacecraft as well as the rocket’s side boosters and other components. Engineers also installed a hard cover to protect the rocket’s launch abort system window and took other steps to prepare the ground systems.
The SLS rocket had been stowed away for weeks after issues with fuel leaks thwarted the first two launch attempts, and then Hurricane Ian rolled through Florida, forcing the rocket to vacate the launchpad in September.
NASA officials returned the rocket to the launchpad last week with the goal of working toward a third launch attempt on November 14, but that schedule shifted to November 16 as NASA acknowledged the looming threat of Hurricane Nicole on Tuesday. It’s not clear if the launch date will be moved again as NASA looks for damage.
The overall goal of NASA’s Artemis program is to return humans to the moon for the first time in half a century. And the Artemis I mission — expected to be the first of many — will lay the groundwork, testing the rocket and spacecraft and all their subsystems to ensure they are safe enough for astronauts to fly to the moon and back.
Nicole, which hit Florida as rare November hurricane, topples homes after making landfall
Hurricane Nicole made landfall early Thursday along the east coast of Florida just south of Vero Beach before it was downgraded to a tropical storm as it raked across the central part of the state, the National Hurricane Center said. Nicole hit a large area of the storm-weary state with strong winds, dangerous storm surge and heavy rain, the center said.
A man and a woman died after being electrocuted by a downed power line at an intersection, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.
“We are urging all of our residents and visitors to use extreme caution if they are outside in the wake of the storm today,” the sheriff’s office said on Facebook. “Never touch a downed power line. If you are driving and see a downed power line, change directions immediately.”
Nicole sent multiple homes toppling into the Atlantic Ocean and threatened a row of high-rise condominiums in places where Hurricane Ian washed away seawalls and other remaining protections only weeks ago.
“Multiple coastal homes in Wilbur-by-the-Sea have collapsed and several other properties are at imminent risk,” Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said in a social media message. In the Daytona Beach area, most bridges to the beachside have been closed to all but essential personnel and a curfew was put into effect, he said.
Reuters/Marco Bello
Wilbur-by-the-Sea is an unincorporated community on a barrier island with only beachfront homes. Next door in Daytona Beach Shores, a strip of high-rise condominiums were evacuated ahead of Nicole’s landfall because their seawalls had collapsed and the beach all but gone.
The homeowners association at the Marbella condominium had just spent $240,000 to temporarily rebuild the seawall Ian destroyed in September, said Connie Hale Gellner, whose family owns a unit there. Live video from the building’s cameras showed Nicole’s storm surge taking it all way.
“We knew it wasn’t meant to stop a hurricane, it was only meant to stop the erosion,” Gellner said. But after Nicole, the building’s pool deck “is basically in the ocean,” Gellner said. “The problem is that we have no more beach. So even if we wanted to rebuild, they’ll probably condemn the building because the water is just splashing up against the building.”
Initial damage assessments showed how Nicole left multiple beachfront properties teetering over the water. The Volusia Sheriff’s Office posted a photo of a house where erosion had undermined the ground up to its main ocean-facing wall. A roof-covered deck jutted out over the eroded slope supported on narrow timbers.
What was a rare November hurricane had already led officials to shut down airports and theme parks and order evacuations that included former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
Meanwhile, some 300,000 homes and businesses in Florida had no electricity, according to PowerOutage.us.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference in Tallahassee that there were 17,000 electric linemen ready to begin restoring power and that numerous other assets including rescue boats and vehicles will be deployed as needed.
“We’re ready and we have resources to respond to whatever post-storm needs may arise,” the governor said.
Nicole had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph Thursday afternoon with its center located about 45 miles north of Tampa and about 165 miles southeast of Tallahassee, according to the hurricane center. It was moving northwest at 15 mph.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Tropical-storm force winds from the sprawling storm extended as far as 345 miles from the center in some directions.
Nicole was expected to move west toward the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, shift north and then move across the Florida Panhandle and parts of Georgia on Thursday night, the hurricane center said. The storm was expected to move through the southeastern U.S. on Friday.
Mike’s Weather Page tweeted videos of many dramatic scenes.
Nicole became a hurricane Wednesday evening as it slammed into Grand Bahama Island after making landfall just hours earlier on Great Abaco island as a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph. It’s the first storm to hit the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that devastated the archipelago in 2019.
For storm-weary Floridians, it’s only 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.
Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club and home, was in one of the evacuation zones, about a quarter-mile inland from the ocean. The main buildings sit on a small rise about 15 feet above sea level, and the property has survived numerous stronger hurricanes since it was built nearly a century ago. The resort’s security office hung up Wednesday when an Associated Press reporter asked whether the club was being evacuated. There was no sign of evacuation by Wednesday afternoon.
There’s no penalty for ignoring an evacuation order, but rescue crews won’t respond if it puts their members at risk.
Officials in Daytona Beach Shores deemed unsafe at least a half dozen, multi-story, coastal residential buildings already damaged by Hurricane Ian and now threatened by Nicole. At some locations, authorities went door-to-door telling people to grab their possessions and leave.
Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort announced they likely would not open as scheduled Thursday.
Palm Beach International Airport reopened Thursday morning and Daytona Beach International Airport said it planned to reopen Friday. Orlando International Airport, the seventh busiest in the U.S., also closed. Farther south, officials said Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Miami International Airport experienced some flight delays and cancellations but both planned to remain open.
Almost two dozen school districts were closing schools for the storm and 15 shelters had opened along Florida’s east coast, DeSantis said.
Forty-five of Florida’s 67 counties were under a state of emergency declaration. President Biden also approved an emergency declaration for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, ordering federal help for the tribal nation, many of whose members live on six reservations around the state. The tribe also owns the Hard Rock Cafe franchise, with several of its hotels and casinos in Nicole’s path.
Warnings and watches were issued for many parts of Florida, including the southwestern Gulf coastline that was devastated by Hurricane Ian, which struck as a Category 4 storm Sept. 28. The storm destroyed homes and damaged crops, including orange groves, across the state – damage many are still dealing with.
Ian brought storm surge of up to 13 feet in late September, causing widespread destruction.
Nicole makes landfall in Florida as rare November hurricane bringing heavy rain and strong winds
Hurricane Nicole made landfall early Thursday along the east coast of Florida just south of Vero Beach, the National Hurricane Center said, before quickly losing some punch and being downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved over central Florida. But it was still hitting a large area of the storm-weary state with strong winds, dangerous storm surge and heavy rain, the center said.
What was a rare November hurricane had already led officials to shut down airports and theme parks and order evacuations 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.
And the number of power outages kept growing: Some 363,000 homes and businesses in Florida had no electricity, according to PowerOutage.us.
Nicole had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph Thursday morning with its center about 30 miles northeast of Tampa and about 60 miles west-southwest of Orlando, according to the hurricane center. It was moving west-northwest at 16 mph.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Tropical storm force winds from the sprawling storm extended as far as 345 miles from the center in some directions.
Nicole was expected to move west toward the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, shift north and then move across the Florida Panhandle and parts of Georgia on Thursday night, the hurricane center said. The storm was expected to move through the southeastern U.S. on Friday.
Mike’s Weather Page tweeted videos of many dramatic scenes, including these:
Nicole became a hurricane Wednesday evening as it slammed into Grand Bahama Island after making landfall just hours earlier on Great Abaco island as a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph. It’s the first storm to hit the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that devastated the archipelago in 2019.
For storm-weary Floridians, it’s only 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.
Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club and home, was in one of the evacuation zones, about a quarter-mile inland from the ocean. The main buildings sit on a small rise about 15 feet above sea level, and the property has survived numerous stronger hurricanes since it was built nearly a century ago. The resort’s security office hung up Wednesday when an Associated Press reporter asked whether the club was being evacuated. There was no sign of evacuation by Wednesday afternoon.
There’s no penalty for ignoring an evacuation order, but rescue crews won’t respond if it puts their members at risk.
Officials in Daytona Beach Shores deemed unsafe at least a half dozen, multi-story, coastal residential buildings already damaged by Hurricane Ian and now threatened by Nicole. At some locations, authorities went door-to-door telling people to grab their possessions and leave.
Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort shut down Wednesday but said they intend to reopen Thursday, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Palm Beach International Airport closed Wednesday morning and Daytona Beach International Airport said it would suspend operations. Orlando International Airport, the seventh busiest in the U.S., also closed. Farther south, officials said Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Miami International Airport experienced some flight delays and cancellations but both planned to remain open.
At a news conference in Tallahassee, Gov. 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.
Nicole “will affect huge parts of the state of Florida all day,” DeSantis said.
Almost two dozen school districts were closing schools for the storm and 15 shelters were open along Florida’s east coast, the governor said.
Forty-five of Florida’s 67 counties were under an emergency declaration.
Warnings and watches were issued for many parts of Florida, including the southwestern Gulf coastline that was devastated by Hurricane Ian, which struck as a Category 4 storm Sept. 28. The storm destroyed homes and damaged crops, including orange groves, across the state – damage many are still dealing with.
Daniel Brown, a senior hurricane specialist at the Miami-based hurricane center, said the storm would affect a large swath of Florida.
“Because the system is so large, really almost the entire east coast of Florida except the extreme southeastern part and the Keys is going to receive tropical storm force winds,” he said.
Early Wednesday, President Biden declared an emergency in Florida and ordered federal assistance to supplement state, tribal and local response efforts to the approaching storm. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is still responding to people who need help in Hurricane Ian’s wake.
Ian brought storm surge of up to 13 feet in late September, causing widespread destruction.
Nicole strikes Florida’s east coast as the first US hurricane in November in nearly 40 years
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Nicole has weakened to a tropical storm after making landfall early Thursday as a Category 1 hurricane along the east coast of Florida, knocking out power to thousands, pushing buildings near collapse and flooding the coast as the first hurricane to hit the US in November in nearly 40 years.
Follow live updates >>
The storm struck just south of Vero Beach with winds of 75 mph before quickly weakening, the National Hurricane Center said. Its strong winds, downpours and storm surge thrashed some areas hit in September by Hurricane Ian.
A tornado threat, plus powerful wind and rain, are expected to continue Thursday in parts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. A tropical storm warning is in effect from Juniper, Florida, to the South Santee River in South Carolina and along Florida’s west coast – where Ian first struck – from Bonita Beach to Indian Pass, plus Lake Okeechobee. Storm surge warnings also remain in place across coastal Florida and Georgia.
“Given the uncertainty of the storm’s strength and path as it approaches South Carolina, residents need to have their personal emergency plans ready to go just in case we need to take safety precautions later in the week,” said Kim Stenson, who heads the state’s emergency management division.
At 7 a.m. ET Thursday, Nicole was still packing 60-mph sustained winds and centered about 30 miles southwest of Orlando, moving west-northwest at 14 mph.
Track Nicole here >>
Up to 8 inches of rain could drench eastern, central and northern portions of Florida. And between 2 to 6 inches are expected from parts of the US southeast to the southern and central Appalachians and western mid-Atlantic through Friday, the hurricane center said.
Nicole is expected to weaken to a depression early Friday and become a post-tropical cyclone over the Southeast.
Here’s what to know now:
Tens of thousands without power: More than 240,000 homes and businesses were without power early Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us.
Crews set to survey damage: In Indian River County, officials Thursday morning will “be assessing debris and messaging cleanup plans,” spokesperson Kathy Copeland. In St. Lucie County, there were so far “no serious reports of damages or injuries,” spokesperson Erick Gill said, adding, “Most likely the biggest impact is going to be beach erosion.”
Residents urged to evacuate unsafe buildings: Ahead of Nicole’s landfall, officials asked people to evacuate some buildings deemed unsafe to withstand the storm. In New Smyrna Beach, some condos were determined to be unsound due to the erosion of a sea wall. And in Daytona Beach Shores, still reeling from Ian’s impact, at least 11 buildings were at risk of collapse, Public Safety Department Director Michael Fowler said.
Volusia County officials told people to leave more than 20 buildings found to be structurally unsound due to Ian’s impact. “There is a strong potential that one or more buildings will collapse during the storm,” Sheriff Mike Chitwood told CNN affiliate WESH-TV on Wednesday.
“Right now, ground zero is here.”
Low tide limits storm surge: Nicole’s peak winds coincided with low tide, limiting the storm surge and inundation on the shore. At Port Canaveral, the surge was measured at just under 6 feet around 4 a.m. ET, just after landfall. Later Thursday morning, surge was down to around 3 feet, but water levels are expected to remain high through high tide, between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.
Flights canceled and schools closed: The storm’s colossal path led to the closure of many schools, colleges and universities, as well as the cancellation of hundreds of flights and the shuttering of amusement parks. Orlando International Airport halted operations Wednesday afternoon, and Miami International Airport warned of cancellations but did not plan to close.
Historic hurricane: Nicole’s landfall Thursday was the latest in a calendar year a hurricane has ever struck Florida’s Atlantic coast. It broke the record set by the Yankee Hurricane, which hit Florida’s east coast on November 4, 1935.
Earlier impacts: Nicole on Wednesday brought strong winds and dangerous storm surge to the northwestern Bahamas.