MIAMI (AP) — Many people evacuated from vulnerable locations in the northwestern Bahamas as Tropical Storm Nicole approached Wednesday and residents of Florida braced for the storm, which could strengthen to a hurricane.
Nicole was expected to be the first storm to make landfall in the Bahamas since Hurricane Dorian, a devastating Category 5 storm that hit the archipelago in 2019, before hitting storm-weary Florida on Wednesday night and moving into Georgia on Thursday.
In the Bahamas, officials said early Wednesday that only a few people were in the more than two dozen shelters that opened.
“We are asking people to please take it (seriously),” said Andrea Newbold with the Disaster Management Unit for Social Services.
