Nicole leaves Florida on Friday and turns into a tropical depression

DORAL, FL – On Friday morning, Nicole exits Florida and becomes a tropical depression on its way to Georgia and the Carolinas, The National Hurricane Center said.

According to the NHC, Nicole, that made landfall in Vero Beach on Thursday morning as a Category 1 hurricane, is now located about 70 miles southwest of Macon, Georgia with maximum sustained winds of 35 mp.

“On the forecast track, the center of Nicole will move across central and northern Georgia this morning and over the western Carolinas later today,” the NHC said. “Nicole is expected to become a post-tropical cyclone later today, then dissipate tonight or early Saturday as it merges with a frontal system over the eastern United States.”

The once hurricane will be bringing heavy rains to portions of the southeastern U.S. but now Floridians can take a break from the devastating effects it had on this part of the country where there was countless damage, including the collapse of portions of a pier in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, floodings and even several deaths.

Some homes were dragged by the ocean in Daytona Beach while four of the dozens of homes in the Wilbur-By-The-Sea area were torn apart. According to Gov. Ron DeSantis, Nicole’s winds had knocked out power to about 330,000 electricity customers, with outages covering 23 percent of Brevard County, 17 percent of Indian River, and smaller percentages in Seminole, Volusia, Putnam, and Orange counties.

“Impacts have been basically what’s expected. You do have downed trees, you have power lines, you have some road washouts,” DeSantis said. “We’ve seen beach erosion, especially in areas that had already seen erosion from Hurricane Ian.”

Nicole’s landfall in the Sunshine State was the eighth hurricane of the 2022 season, represents the first November hurricane to strike Florida since 1935, and marks the latest in the calendar year that Florida’s east coast has seen a hurricane. It’s also the first to hit anywhere in the United States in November since 1985.

Photo by: Unsplash.com