Power Outages As Rare November Storm Hits Florida

More than 300,000 homes and businesses in Florida have been left without power as storm Nicole batters the US state.

States of emergency and evacuation orders are in place, and residents have been told to stay indoors with heavy rain and storm surges forecast.

Two people were killed when they were electrocuted by a downed power line in Orange County in the centre of the state.

Storms of this size so late in the year are extremely rare.

The storm has already lashed the Bahamas as a huge category one hurricane, and caused widespread flooding.

Nicole hit Florida’s eastern coast as a hurricane at 03:00 EST (08:00 GMT) with winds of up to 75mph (120km/h).

These have weakened slightly to around 60mph and Nicole has been downgraded to a tropical storm as it makes its way north-west across the sunshine state.

Since the storm hit in the early hours, more than 600,000 homes and businesses have lost power.

Electricity has been restored to around half of these but 308,000 remain without, according to service providers.

The storm is expected to weaken further as it heads north towards Georgia and the Carolinas, over the next two days.

Its remnants could possibly even hit Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York later in the week.

Most of Florida’s 22 million residents remained under a tropical storm, high wind and storm surge warnings along with local hurricane statements that urged people to stay indoors and watch for flooding.

Source: BBC