April 27, 2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Tropical Storm Nicole hit Florida as a hurricane Thursday, washing away the remaining protections for a stretch of beachfront properties that lost their seawall during Hurricane Ian only weeks before. In Daytona Beach Shores, surging ocean water threatened the foundations of at least a dozen high-rise condos and houses.
Nicole remains a sprawling tropical storm, covering nearly the entire weather-weary state of Florida early Thursday while also reaching into Georgia, the Carolinas and Alabama. Damaging winds extended as far as 450 miles from the center in some directions as Nicole turned northward over central Florida Thursday morning.
Krista Dowling Goodrich, who manages 130 rental homes in Daytona Beach Shores as director of sales and marketing at Salty Dog Vacations, witnessed the beachfront disappear behind some of the properties as evacuations were underway.
“While we were there the whole backyard just started collapsing into the ocean. It went all the way up to the house,” she said. The water also compromised the remaining land between a row of tall condominium buildings nearby, she said.
Officials in Daytona Beach Shores deemed multiple multi-story coastal residential buildings unsafe, and went door-to-door telling people to grab their possessions and leave.
“These were the tall highrises. So the people who wouldn’t leave, they were physically forcing them out because it’s not safe,” Goodrich said. “I’m concerned for the infrastructure of the area right now because once the seawalls are gone, they’re not going to just let people go back in ... there will be a lot of people displaced for a while."
The rare November hurricane prompted officials to shut down airports and theme parks and order evacuations. Authorities warned that Nicole’s storm surge could further erode many beaches hit by Hurricane Ian in September.
Nicole made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane at about 3 a.m. Thursday, more than a hundred miles south of Daytona Beach Shores, before its maximum sustained winds dropped to 60 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
Robbie Berg, a hurricane specialist at the center in Miami advised people to understand that hazards from Tropical Storm Nicole “will exist across the state of Florida today.” Nicole came could briefly emerge over the northeastern corner of the Gulf of Mexico Thursday afternoon before moving over the Florida Panhandle and Georgia, he said.
For storm-weary Floridians, it is only the third November hurricane to hit their shores since recordkeeping began in 1853. The previous ones were the 1935 Yankee Hurricane and Hurricane Kate in 1985.
At a news conference Wednesday in Tallahassee, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that 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.
