Winds blow an umbrella in and out as guests leave the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Wednesday, Nov. 9, as conditions worsen as Hurricane Nicole approaches.
Joe Burbank/AP
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Joe Burbank/AP
Winds blow an umbrella in and out as guests leave the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., Wednesday, Nov. 9, as conditions worsen as Hurricane Nicole approaches.
Joe Burbank/AP
MIAMI – A storm headed by Florida strengthened into Hurricane Nicole on Wednesday evening as it pounded the Bahamas, and US officials ordered evacuations that included former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
It’s a rare November hurricane for storm-weary Florida, where only two such hurricanes have made landfall since record-keeping began in 1853 – Hurricane Yankee in 1935 and Hurricane Kate in 1985.
Nicole was expected to reach Florida late Wednesday or early Thursday with a storm that could further erode many beaches battered by Hurricane Ian in September, before moving into Georgia and the Carolinas later Thursday and Friday. Heavy rain was expected across the region.
Nicole’s center was about 75 miles (125 kilometers) east-northeast of West Palm Beach, Florida, late Wednesday, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. It had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 km/h) and was moving west-northwest at 13 mph (20 km/h).
The widespread storm became a hurricane as it slammed into Grand Bahama, having made landfall just hours earlier on Great Abaco Island as a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 70 mph.
Nicole is the first hurricane to hit the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that devastated the archipelago in 2019.
In the Bahamas, officials said more than 860 people were in more than two dozen shelters. Extensive flooding, downed trees and power and water outages were reported in the northwestern region of the archipelago.
Authorities were particularly concerned about a large Haitian community in Great Abaco that was devastated by Dorian and has since grown from 50 hectares (20 acres) to 200 hectares (80 acres).
“Don’t put yourself in danger,” said Zhivago Dames, assistant police information commissioner, as he asked everyone to stay inside. “Our first responders are there. However, they will not put their lives in danger.”
In Florida, the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office Lucie said in a tweet that storm surge from Tropical Storm Nicole had already breached the seawall along the Indian Drive River, which runs parallel to the Atlantic Ocean. The Martin County Sheriff’s Office also said seawater had breached part of a road on Hutchinson Island.
Residents in several Florida counties — Flagler, Palm Beach, Martin and Volusia — were ordered to evacuate such barrier islands, low-lying areas and mobile homes. Volusia, home of Daytona Beach, imposed a curfew and warned that intercoastal bridges used by evacuees would be closed when winds reached 39 mph.
Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s club and home, is in one of those evacuation zones, built about a quarter mile inland from the ocean. The main buildings stand at a low elevation that is about 15 feet (4.6 meters) above sea level, and the property has survived many of the strongest hurricanes since it was built nearly a century ago. The resort’s security office hung up on Wednesday when an Associated Press reporter asked if the club was being evacuated, and there were no signs of an evacuation as of early afternoon.
There is no penalty for ignoring an evacuation order, but rescue crews will not respond if it puts their members at risk.
In Palm Beach County, about 400 people registered at seven evacuation centers, including Hidir Dontar, a software engineer who carried a backpack and plastic bags with his belongings. He said he didn’t want to stay in his apartment because the landlord wasn’t putting shutters on the windows, something he didn’t feel safe about after living through “a bad one,” Hurricane Frances in 2004.
“I didn’t want to be in the middle of the storm, have something go wrong and ask myself: ‘What do I do now?'” said Dontar.
Meanwhile, officials in Daytona Beach Shores deemed unsafe at least a half-dozen high-rise, coastal apartment buildings already damaged by Hurricane Ian and now threatened by Nicole. In some places, authorities went door to door telling people to grab their belongings and leave.
Disney World and Universal Orlando Resort announced they were closing early Wednesday and likely won’t reopen as planned Thursday.
Palm Beach International Airport was closed Wednesday morning, and Daytona Beach International Airport said it will cease operations. Orlando International Airport, the seventh busiest in the US, was also closed. Further south, officials said Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Miami International Airport were experiencing 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 that significant power outages could occur, but that 16,000 linemen were on standby to restore power, as well as 600 guards and seven search and rescue teams.
“It’s going to affect large parts of the state of Florida throughout the day,” DeSantis said of the storm’s expected landfall.
Nearly 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 a state of emergency declaration.
Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said Floridians should expect possible tornadoes, rip currents and flash flooding.
Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis, who is at the UN Climate Summit COP27, drew attention to the link between storms and climate change.
“There have always been storms, but as the planet warms from carbon emissions, storms are increasing in intensity and frequency,” he said. “For those in Grand Bahama and Abaco, I know it’s especially hard for you to deal with another storm.”
Tropical storm force winds extended up to 485 miles (780 kilometers) from the center in some directions.
New warnings and watches were issued for many parts of Florida, including the southwestern Gulf Coast, which was devastated by Hurricane Ian, which struck as a Category 4 storm on September 28. The storm destroyed homes and damaged crops, including orange trees, across the state. — harm that many are still dealing with.
In Florida, “the combination of a dangerous storm surge and high tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be inundated by rising waters moving inland from the coast,” the hurricane center said.
Daniel Brown, a senior hurricane specialist at the Miami-based National Hurricane Center, said the storm will affect much of the state.
“Because the system is so large, really almost the entire east coast of Florida except for the extreme southeast and the Keys will get tropical storm force winds,” he said.
The storm is then expected to move across central and northern Florida into southern Georgia on Thursday, forecasters said. It was then forecast to move across the Carolinas on Friday.
“We’re going to be concerned about rainfall as we get later in the week across parts of the southeastern United States and south of the Appalachians where there could be some flooding, flash flooding with that rainfall,” Brown said.
Early Wednesday, President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency in Florida and ordered federal aid to supplement state, tribal and local response efforts to the approaching storm. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is still responding to those in need from Hurricane Ian.
On the beach north of Mar-a-Lago, as winds neared 40 mph Wednesday afternoon, scores of people were taking videos of the churning ocean.
Denny DeHaven, who works for a Social Security advocacy group, said he lives inland, so he’s not too concerned.
“It’s only going to be a Category 1 – the thing I’m most worried about is a power outage,” he said. “The people I worry about are the ones who live around here after seeing what happened in Fort Myers.” Hurricane Ian brought a storm surge of up to 13 feet in late September, causing widespread destruction.
In a video posted on Twitter, Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood said the surge had already arrived and dozens of waterfront buildings were declared structurally unsafe. A mandatory evacuation was issued for the beach side and a curfew was scheduled for 7 p.m.
“We’re looking for a really tough night here,” Chitwood said.
