Nicole Moves North After Toppling Florida Homes

Storm killed at least 2, wrecked dozens of buildings
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Nov 11, 2022 4:37 AM CST
Weakened Nicole Moves Through Georgia
People survey damage to the shoreline following the passage of Hurricane Nicole, Thursday, Nov. 10, 2022, in Vero Beach, Fla.   (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

Tropical Depression Nicole was moving through Georgia Friday morning after a day of causing havoc as it churned through Florida as a hurricane and then tropical storm. The rare November hurricane could dump as much as 6 inches of rain over the Blue Ridge Mountains, the National Hurricane Center said. Flash and urban flooding will be possible as the rain spreads into the eastern Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic, and New England through Saturday, the AP reports. Nicole had spent Thursday cutting across central Florida after making landfall as a hurricane early that morning near Vero Beach. The brunt of the damage was along the East Coast well north of there, in the Daytona Beach area. The storm made it to the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday evening before turning north.

The storm caused at least two deaths and sent homes along Florida's coast toppling into the Atlantic Ocean and damaged many others, including hotels and a row of high-rise condominiums. It was another devastating blow just weeks after Hurricane Ian came ashore on the Gulf Coast, killing more than 130 people and destroying thousands of homes. Nicole was the first hurricane to hit the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that devastated the archipelago in 2019. For storm-weary Floridians, it was the first November hurricane to hit their shores since 1985 and only the third since recordkeeping began in 1853.

Officials in Volusia County, northeast of Orlando, said Thursday evening that building inspectors had declared 24 hotels and condos in Daytona Beach Shores and New Smyrna Beach to be unsafe and ordered their evacuations. At least 25 single-family homes in Wilbur-by-the-Sea had been declared structurally unsafe by building inspectors and also were evacuated, county officials said. "Structural damage along our coastline is unprecedented. We’ve never experienced anything like this before," County Manager George Recktenwald said. A man and a woman were killed by electrocution when they touched downed power lines in the Orlando area, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office said. Nicole also caused flooding well inland. (More hurricane stories.)

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