Hurricane Nicole was a sprawling late-season Category 1 hurricane in November 2022. The fourteenth named storm and eighth hurricane of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, Nicole formed as a subtropical cyclone on November 7, from a non-tropical area of low pressure near the Greater Antilles, and transitioned into a tropical cyclone the next day. Then, taking a path similar to that of Hurricane Dorian three years earlier, Nicole made landfall on November 9, on Great Abaco and on Grand Bahama in The Bahamas, where it strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane. On November 10, it made landfall twice in Florida, south of Vero Beach and then northwest of Cedar Key, after briefly emerging over the Gulf of Mexico. Nicole then weakened to a depression while moving over the Florida Panhandle, and then was absorbed into a mid-latitude trough and cold front over extreme eastern Tennessee the following day.
Nicole became the third November hurricane on record to make landfall in Florida, along with the 1935 Yankee hurricane and Hurricane Kate in 1985. Nicole crossed the same region in Florida devastated six weeks earlier by Hurricane Ian, and was the first hurricane to make landfall on Florida's east coast since Katrina in 2005. Despite being relatively weak, Nicole's large size produced widespread heavy rainfall and strong winds across the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas, and Florida, knocking out power and inflicting significant damage in many areas. Days of strong on-shore wind flow onto the east coast of Florida produced severe beach erosion, especially in Volusia, St. Johns, and Flagler counties. Eleven indirect deaths altogether have been connected to the storm, six in the Dominican Republic and five in Florida.
Meteorological history
A mid- to upper-level trough in the westerlies moved from the Mid-Atlantic states into the western Atlantic on November 3. As this disturbance moved southward on November 4, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) began monitoring the northeastern Caribbean Sea and southwestern Atlantic Ocean where a large non-tropical low-pressure system was expected to develop within a few days. This system then interacted with the Intertropical Convergence Zone over northern South America and on November 5, a broad area of low pressure producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms formed over the Caribbean Sea south of Hispaniola before reforming north of Puerto Rico the next day. Benefitting from the inflow of moist tropical air from the Caribbean Sea and very warm sea surface temperatures, the disturbance was soon exhibiting some subtropical characteristics, and gradually becoming better organized as it moved north-northwestward closer to an upper-level low. This trend continued into the next day, with a sufficiently well-defined center of circulation developing, deep convection increasing and a band of winds with speeds reaching occurring to the east of the center. Convective organization continued to increase and at 06:00 UTC on November 7, the disturbance developed into Subtropical Storm Nicole while located about south-southwest of Bermuda. After forming, Nicole moved erratically northwestward due to southeasterly flow on the west side of a low- to mid-level ridge as the low-level center became vertically stacked with the upper-level low. The next day (November 8), Nicole made a sharp left turn to the west-southwest due to a cold front with a low- to mid-level anticyclone to the north of it moving into the western Atlantic north of Nicole. During this time, Nicole strengthened as its inner-core convection improved and the radius of its maximum winds contracted, which resulted in the system transitioning to a tropical cyclone at 18:00 UTC. Although its radius of its maximum winds became smaller, Nicole's interaction with the anticyclone caused its tropical storm wind field in the northern quadrant to grow and by November 10, this wind field had grown to over from the center in the northeastern quadrant.