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Hurricane Nicole barrels into Florida's Atlantic coast
Hurricane Nicole: Nicole was upgraded from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane as it thrashed the Bahamas on Wednesday.
Hurricane Nicole barreled into Florida's Atlantic shoreline early on Thursday with a brew of heavy downpours, fierce winds and a treacherous surge of ocean surf that threatened coastal areas still reeling from the last major storm six weeks ago.
Nicole was upgraded from a tropical storm to a Category 1 hurricane as it thrashed the Bahamas on Wednesday. It was packing sustained winds of up to 75 mph (120 kph) as it made landfall along the east coast of Florida north of Miami, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm slammed ashore around 3 a.m. EST at Vero Beach, about 100 miles from the affluent resort city of Boca Raton.
A hurricane warning was posted for a 240-mile coastal stretch that included the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, where NASA's big, new moon rocket stood exposed to the elements and anchored to its launch pad to ride out the storm.
The hurricane center also issued storm-surge advisories for much of Florida's Atlantic coast, warning that wind-driven waves would wash over beaches and rush inland to flood low-lying areas well beyond the shore.
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Storm surges wreaked havoc along the state's Gulf Coast and its eastern seaboard when Hurricane Ian crashed ashore on Sept. 28 and plowed across the Florida Peninsula to the Atlantic, causing an estimated $60 billion in damage and killing more than 140 people.
Nicole is expected to pack less punch at landfall than Ian, which struck Florida as a major Category 4 storm. Authorities warned, however, that Nicole still posed a formidable threat, especially to structures and coastal foundations weakened by Ian.
"Dozens upon dozens" of oceanside buildings in Volusia County, including high-rise condominiums, have been declared structurally unsafe since Ian, with some now "in imminent danger of collapsing" from further shoreline erosion, Sheriff Mike Chitwood said.
