Hurricane Nicole makes impact with implications for Rochester

ROCHESTER, N.Y. You have seen the pictures before of the horrific damage caused by Hurricane Ian around Fort Meyers, Florida.

It is going to be months, if not years, before they finally get things cleaned and back to some sense of normalcy. It is hard to believe that it has been six weeks since the impact of this major hurricane.

As the saying goes, there is no rest for the weary. As of Wednesday, there are new tropical storm and hurricane warnings posted for Florida. This is not going to be on the scale or the intensity of Hurricane Ian, but there will be a significant impact from Nicole.

Tonight and Thursday portions of Florida can expect inland flooding, damaging winds, power outages and even some coastal flooding. That coastal flooding will be due to ocean wave heights that are running 40 to 50 feet and the onshore wind will drive that water along the coast.

We expect that conditions will not improve until later Thursday. Already there are what we call “feeder bands” of heavy rain moving inland. We expect that Nicole will be a strong tropical storm or weak hurricane as it comes ashore near Port St. Lucy by later this evening.

This will be a small compact storm that will move right across the peninsula and then continue up the East Coast. This storm will weaken significantly as it moves north, but no doubt Rochester will see the remnants of this storm in the form of heavy rain.

It will likely be a steady and possibly flooding rain for us late Friday and Friday night. As a result, the News10NBC First Alert meteorologists have issued a yellow alert for Western New York.