Tropical Depression Nicole was barreling through Georgia early Friday, a day after wreaking havoc on its way through Florida, first as a hurricane and later as a tropical storm.
The rare November storm could dump as much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain on Friday, the National Hurricane Center said. Flash flooding and urban flooding are possible as downpours spread into the eastern Ohio Valley, Mid-Atlantic and New England through Saturday.
Nicole swept through central Florida on Thursday after making landfall as a hurricane early in the morning near Vero Beach. Most of the damage was along the east coast, north of there, in the Daytona Beach area. The storm reached the Gulf of Mexico late Thursday before turning north.
The storm killed at least two people and washed homes from the Florida coast into the ocean, as well as damaging many other properties, including hotels and a high-rise apartment complex. It was another devastating blow to the region, a few weeks after Hurricane Ian killed more than 130 people and destroyed thousands of homes.
Nicole was the first hurricane to hit the Bahamas since Category 5 Dorian, which ripped through the archipelago in 2019. For storm-hardened Floridians, it was the first hurricane to make landfall in a November since 1985, and the third since records began in 1853.
Although Nicole’s winds caused minimal damage, its storm surge was more destructive than it might have been in the past due to rising sea levels from melting ice at the poles due to climate change, the Princeton University climatologist said. , Michael Oppenheimer. This translates into increased coastal flooding, reaching farther inland, and what used to be rare events now occurring almost every year in some places, he added.
“This is definitely part of the picture of what’s going on,” Oppenheimer said. “It will happen elsewhere. It’s going to happen all over the world.”
[Con información de The Associated Press]
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