Tropical storm Nicole forces evacuations in Bahamas and Florida

Tropical storm Nicole approaching the northwestern Bahamas and Florida’s Atlantic coastline. Photo / NOAA via AP

Tropical storm Nicole forced people from their homes in the Bahamas and threatened to grow into a rare November hurricane in Florida, shutting down airports and prompting an evacuation order that included former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

Crews evacuated dozens of people from vulnerable locations in the northwestern Bahamas before the approaching storm, which had already sent seawater washing across roads on Hutchinson Island in Martin County, Florida.

“We are forecasting it to become a hurricane as it nears the northwestern Bahamas, and remain a hurricane as it approaches the east coast of Florida,” Daniel Brown, a senior hurricane specialist at the Miami-based National Hurricane Center, said Wednesday.

Nicole is the first storm to hit the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a Category 5 storm that devastated the archipelago in 2019, before hitting storm-weary Florida on a Wednesday night and moving into Georgia on Thursday.

In the Bahamas, officials said more than 520 people were in more than two dozen shelters. Flooding and power outages were reported in Abaco ahead of the storm’s arrival.

“We are asking people to please take it [seriously],” said Andrea Newbold with the Disaster Management Unit for Social Services. “Don’t wait until the last minute.”

Residents in several Florida counties — Flagler, Palm Beach, Martin and Volusia — were ordered to evacuate from barrier islands, low-lying areas and mobile homes.

Tropical storm Nicole has shut down airports and prompted an evacuation order that includes former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club. Photo / Andrew Harnik, AP

In advance of the storm, Palm Beach International Airport closed Wednesday morning, and Daytona Beach International Airport said it was ceasing operations at 12.30pm. Orlando International Airport, the seventh busiest in the US, was set to close at 4pm. Wednesday. 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.

Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s club and home, is in an area that is under a Palm Beach County evacuation order, sitting about a quarter-mile inland from the ocean. The main buildings sit on a small rise that is about 4.6m 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 when an Associated Press reporter asked whether the club was being evacuated. There is no penalty for ignoring an evacuation order, but rescue crews will not respond if it puts their members at risk.

At a news conference in Tallahassee, Governor 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.

“It will affect huge parts of the state of Florida all day,” DeSantis said of the storm’s expected landing.

Almost two dozen school districts were closing schools for the storm and 15 shelters had opened along Florida’s east coast, the governor said.

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 COP27 UN Climate Summit, said he has mobilised all government resources as the storm nears.

“There have always been storms, but as the planet warms from carbon emissions, storms are growing in intensity and frequency,” he said. “For those in Grand Bahama and Abaco, I know it is especially difficult for you to face another storm,” Davis said, referring to the hardest hit islands by Dorian.

At 10am, the storm was 40km east northeast of Great Abaco Island and about 340km east of West Palm Beach, Florida. With maximum sustained winds of 110kmh, the storm was moving at 19kmh.

A red flag, signaling high surf and strong currents, flies in strong wind on the beach in Palm Beach as Tropical storm Nicole approaches. Photo / Andrew Harnik, AP

It could intensify into a rare November hurricane before hitting Florida, where only two have made landfall since recordkeeping began in 1853 — the 1935 Yankee Hurricane and Hurricane Kate in 1985.

New warnings and watches were issued for many parts of Florida, including the southwestern Gulf coastline 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 groves, across the state.

Ian lashed much of the central region of Florida with heavy rainfall, causing flooding that many residents are still dealing with as Nicole approaches.

In Florida, the “combination of a dangerous storm surge and the tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by rising waters moving inland from the shoreline”, the hurricane centre’s advisory said.

Brown said the storm will affect a large part of the state.

“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.”

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 are going to be concerned with rainfall as we get later into the week across portions of the southeastern United States and southern Appalachians, where there could be some flooding, flash flooding with that rainfall,” Brown said.

Early Wednesday, President Joe 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 is still responding to those in need from Hurricane Ian.