Future Timeline

Nicole made landfall in Florida as a hurricane early Thursday morning, but its impacts including prolonged coastal flooding, beach erosion, strong winds, high surf, heavy rain and tornadoes will continue to impact other parts of the Southeast as well as the mid-Atlantic and Northeast through the end of the workweek.

N​icole's center pushed ashore just south of Vero Beach, Florida, at 3 a.m. EST. It's maximum sustained winds were 75 mph, making Nicole a Category 1 hurricane.

N​ow that Nicole is inland, it has weakened back to a strong tropical storm.

N​icole is just the fourth November hurricane to landfall in the mainland U.S. in records dating to the mid-19th century, and the first to do so in 37 years.

HOUSTON (AP) — Fourteen years after Hurricane Ike ripped through thousands of homes and businesses near Galveston, Texas — but mostly spared the region’s oil refineries and chemical plants — the U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to authorize the most expensive project ever recommended by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect against the next raging storm.

Ike erased beachfront neighborhoods, causing $30 billion in damage. But with so much of the nation’s petrochemical industry in the Houston-Galveston corridor, it could have been even worse. That close call inspired marine science professor Bill Merrell to first propose a massive coastal barrier to protect against a direct hit.

Now, the National Defense Authorization Act includes authorizations for a $34 billion plan that borrows from Merrell’s idea.

“It was quite different than anything we had done in the United States and it took us a little while to come around to it,” said Merrell of Texas A&M University at Galveston.