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Tropical Storm Nicole gained strength on Tuesday as it churned toward the Bahamas on track for Florida’s Atlantic coast, where a hurricane warning was posted for nearly 250 miles of shoreline with millions of residents warned to hunker down and prepare.
Nicole, packing maximum sustained winds of 70 mph, will likely grow into a hurricane on Wednesday around the Bahamas before making US landfall along Florida’s east coast north of Miami on Wednesday night or early Thursday, forecasters said.
A hurricane warning was posted for Grand Bahama Island, Bimini, the Berry Islands and the Abacos in the northwestern corner of the West Indies archipelago nation, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
A 240-mile expanse of Florida’s Atlantic shoreline from Boca Raton north to around Flagler Beach was likewise placed under a hurricane warning.
That stretch includes NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, where a colossal new $14 billion moon rocket was rolled out to its launch pad last week for a debut test flight that had been planned for next Monday.
Although the rocket was built to withstand exposure to heavy rains and hurricane-force winds up to 85 mph, NASA said on Tuesday it was postponing the flight by at least two days to give launch crews extra time to deal with the storm.
