Nicole’s mark on South Florida minimal: damaged piers, sand-caked walkways, soggy shops

Nicole’s strong winds and drenching rain largely spared South Florida but there was some damage: Two popular Broward County fishing piers took a beating, the ocean briefly flooded Hollywood Beach’s ocean-side walkway and some shops, and a section of A1A in Fort Lauderdale was blocked by sand and flooding Thursday morning. Thousands also lost power, though the numbers were quickly declining.

On Hollywood Beach, the sun was shining again Thursday morning but several inches of sand and debris coated sections of the Broadwalk. Fishing lures, stray flip-flops and uprooted marine plants dotted the sand, along with mounds of dirty gray sea foam.

City staffers were already at work cleaning, using earth movers to scrape sand off the brick and dump it back on the beach. Others teamed up to right knocked-over stone trash cans and park benches. Business owners pressure-washed, mopped and swept the sand, sea foam — and in some cases, seawater — that made its way into their stores.

“It’s amazing the ocean came right up. Thank God my awning made it,” said Frank Aubrey, owner of Little Venice Pizza, where the floor was littered with sand.

The storm made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane just south of Vero Beach early Thursday, hitting the coast with strong winds and drenching the upper half of the state from Tampa to Cocoa Beach.

In South Florida, gusts near the coast generally ranged between 35 and 45 miles an hour, with a few stronger gusts recorded in areas such as Dania Beach, and Juno Beach, said Robert Molleda, a severe weather expert with Miami’s National Weather Service office. Between 2 and 4 inches of rain generally fell in South Florida, with slightly higher totals in some parts of eastern Broward, he said.

“From a rain and wind standpoint, it was not too bad,” Molleda said. “Coastal flooding was the biggest impact from the storm.”

The most eye-catching damage from that flooding was at Anglin’s Pier in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, where people can normally fish 24 hours a day. Waves took a chunk out of the middle of the nearly six-decade-old structure. No injuries were reported but nobody will be catching fish there for quite awhile.

The pier has often been damaged by storms. It needed to be rebuilt after Hurricane Wilma in 2005, and needed renovations after Hurricane Irma in 2017, owner Spiro Marchelos said Thursday.

“We’re fortunate that that’s the only damage that occurred, and we’re here to replace, fix and go on,” Marchelos said. “It’s going to take some time, but we’ll get it done.”

Lauderdale-By-The-Sea Mayor Chris Vincent, in a statement on Thursday, called the pier an “iconic landmark” and “seeing it damaged is heartbreaking.”

“While the pier is privately owned, I know our Town will do what we can to support the property owner in the coming days and months,” he said.

Longtime Fort Lauderdale resident Tom Bradley was just outside Anglin’s on Thursday morning to see the damage to the pier. He noted that the high tide came in and damaged the middle of the pier.

“It was bad here, but nowhere near as bad as it could’ve been if we were farther north because we were on the clean side of the storm, not the dirty side,” Bradley said. “There’s really not much damage here except for the pier.”

There also was damage to the pier in Deerfield Beach, where city webcam footage showed violent swells jarred loose wooden railings and planks of the city’s pier. But the structure itself weathered Nicole’s pounding waves.

Beach erosion was a concern across the coastline.

In Miami Beach, which had been cleared and opened to visitors by Thursday afternoon, city officials were assessing erosion but so far had reported “no significant issues,” a spokeswoman said.

In South Florida, where the effects of the winds were less pronounced, Nicole had also knocked out electricity to thousands — although by 10 a.m. on Thursday, only 550 customers in Broward remained without power, just 400 in Miami-Dade.

One of those without power in Northeast Dade was Alexandra Quinan, 31, a law firm administrative assistant.

The electricity at her and her husband’s house flicked off early Thursday evening — and was still out Friday morning. Her phone battery was nearly dead, but the night was not terrible.

“I actually fell asleep pretty quickly. It was a cool night,” she said. “Breezy. Could have been worse.”

Miami Herald Staff Writers Tess Riski, Grethel Aguila and Aaron Leibowitz contributed to this story.

This story was originally published November 10, 2022 at 9:56 AM.