Treasure Coast - Tuesday November 7, 2022: A Hurricane Warning has been issued for the Treasure Coast as tropical storm Nicole gains strength and heads west towards Florida’s east coast.
Nicole is expected to have a wide-ranging impact across much of Florida. Mike Brennan, Acting Deputy Director of the National Hurricane Center, said tropical storm force winds extended 380 miles from the center as of Tuesday afternoon.
"So, we’re going to have a very large area of impacts," said Brennan, "but potentially higher end impacts as we expect Nicole to go on and intensify to a hurricane as it approaches the east coast of Florida late Wednesday into Thursday.”
Over the next 24 hours Nicole is expected to jog west, south-west and then a final turn back to the north-west and make landfall as a Category 1 Hurricane.
“Now exactly where that turn occurs, will determine exactly what area we see the worst conditions in here along the Florida east coast," said Brennan. "But we’ve now issued a Hurricane Warning from Palm Beach County up through Volusia County. Anywhere in that area including places like West Palm Beach, Stuart, Melbourne, up to Daytona Beach is at the risk of hurricane conditions.”
Brennan points out that tropical storm force winds will be arriving well in advance of the center of the storm, gusts beyond 40 MPH can be expected early Wednesday, and then there is the storm surge.
Three to five inches of rain is expected with isolated amounts up to seven inches along the east coast. and "we have a storm surge warning that’s in effect from north Palm Beach all the way up through Cape Canaveral," said Brennan. "We could see storm surge values as high as 3 to 5 feet above ground level in this storm surge warning area.”