The storm is expected to strengthen into a Category 1 hurricane as it approaches the Florida peninsula, said Jamie Rhome, acting director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. “The worst of the impact will be coming onshore during the day on Wednesday, and possibly lingering on Thursday,” Mr. Rhome said.
It is expected to “go across the state and then hook back,” he said. The timing was not immediately clear, but that trajectory means that “regardless of where the center tracks, a good portion of the Florida peninsula will feel some of the impact” of wind and rain from the storm, Mr. Rhome said.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday declared a state of emergency for 34 counties that could be in the path of the storm, authorizing the state’s emergency management division to pursue emergency measures and seek federal assistance.
“While this storm does not, at this time, appear that it will become much stronger, I urge all Floridians to be prepared and to listen to announcements from local emergency management officials,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement.
Nicole is the third named storm to form in the Atlantic since Halloween and the second this month.
“This is the most Atlantic named storms to form between October 31 – November 7 on record,” Phil Klotzbach, a senior research scientist at Colorado State University, said on Twitter on Monday.
And although it may seem rare to have a named storm this late in the hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, half of the seasons since 1966 have had at least one named storm form in November, Mr. Klotzbach said.
There is a chance of tying the November record set in 2001 for named storms if another area that the National Hurricane Center is monitoring in the Central Atlantic becomes a named storm. This area could become strong enough for a name — it would be called Owen — once it “starts moving northeast, away from the extremely robust outflow from Nicole’s large-scale circulation,” Mr. Klotzbach said.
