Nicole Heads to Florida Boston News Weather Sports

Tropical Storm Nicole made landfall in the Bahamas today and moving further west towards Florida, will make another overnight landfall tonight. The National Hurricane Center’s current forecast calls for Nicole to strengthen into a Category 1 hurricane before making landfall north of West Palm Beach tonight.

From there Nicole will weaken fairly quickly, becoming a tropical storm again by tomorrow afternoon and then a low and then a remnant low when it turns and moves north later in the week.

When Nicole comes to South Carolina, Nicole will no longer exist. But Nicole’s moisture is being sucked from the Great Lakes into another low-pressure system. After combining forces, the storm will move east through the North East and into England. To reiterate, we will not be hit by Nicole in any way, although we will see some rain and gusty winds Friday night and Saturday morning.

When these remaining tropical systems fall apart, they are usually broken in two: instead of one tropical system producing rain and wind, we usually see half the storm producing wind and half the storm producing heavy rain. The west side of the storm produces the heaviest rain, while the east side produces the strongest gusts of wind.

To us, it looks like we’re threading the needle almost perfectly. Where we will see some rain and some wind. But we won’t see the highest rain totals (2-4″) nor the highest wind gusts of 55-65 mph. I think most of us are set for 1-2″ of rain and most of us will be on the low end of that, close to 1″ with spots getting closer to 2″. Wind gusts will be highest on the Cape and South Coast. The risk of coastal flooding is low as the winds are from the south and apart from the cape there is little onshore component and the tides are astronomically low.

With heavy rains and lots of leaves and probably some clogged gullies I think some local road flooding is likely. So, if possible, clear the gullies of any debris by Friday noon.

We still have two nice days until Friday evening. The sun will be back tomorrow with mild temperatures while highs climb into the 60s. Tomorrow you’ll notice a good breeze again, but that’s the warmer air coming in. We’ll continue to warm up through Friday as many of us have another chance at 70° on both Friday and Saturday.