Around November 5, a huge area of disturbed weather developed across the eastern Caribbean and neighboring areas of the Atlantic. The system was broad and disorganized, but brought several inches of rain to Puerto Rico and Hispaniola as the strongest storms passed northward through that area over the following day. A low pressure center appeared on November 6 northwest of Puerto Rico, but it was non-tropical in nature at first. This slowly changed as scattered convection developed near the center, and the system was designated Subtropical Storm Nicole early on November 7.
At first, the cyclone moved gradually northwest, but a ridge began to build north of Nicole, turning it toward the west the next day. Meanwhile, despite periodic intrusions of dry air into the center, the storm strengthened steadily. The pressure gradient between the system and the ridge drove some intense winds north of the center; as a result, Nicole had a very large radius of gale force winds, even as the core tightened. The cyclone transitioned to a fully tropical storm on November 8. It actually turned south of west that night and approached hurricane strength as it neared the Bahamas. The storm owed its continued intensification to anomalously warm waters in the western Atlantic; these waters allowed it to reach category 1 hurricane status on November 9. By then, Nicole was close to landfall in eastern Florida. The system didn't look much like a typical hurricane, as it lacked a traditional central dense overcast, but this didn't stop it from bringing strong winds and heavy rain to much of the Florida peninsula.
The center officially moved ashore very early on November 10. In doing so, it became just the third hurricane on record to make landfall in Florida in November, and the first since Hurricane Kate in 1985. Soon after, it weakened to a tropical storm. The ridge to the storm's north moved out toward the east, allowing Nicole to begin a northward turn. It nevertheless emerged briefly over the Gulf of Mexico. It stayed very close to the west coast of Florida though, and soon moved ashore again along the Gulf coast. An approaching front picked up Nicole at that point and began to accelerate it toward the northeast. The storm weakened to a tropical depression that night, and became post-tropical over the southeast U.S. on November 11. It brought a quick hit of flooding rains to regions all along the Appalachians over the next day or so.
Nicole was an unusual hurricane on satellite imagery, with little convection near the center. The above image shows it at landfall on November 10.
Both Nicole's formation point and its westward track were rare for a November cyclone, allowing it to join a small handful of U.S. landfalling hurricanes in the month.
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