Florida
Florida prepares as Nicole looms
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – With Tropical Storm Nicole anticipated to strengthen to a hurricane earlier than hitting the state’s East Coast, President Joe Biden authorised an emergency declaration as Florida officers Wednesday urged residents to be ready.
A ten a.m. advisory from the Nationwide Hurricane Middle mentioned the storm may make landfall within the state Wednesday evening and transfer via Central Florida and North Florida on Thursday. Nicole is predicted to convey heavy wind, storm surge and flooding.
“The mixed winds and storm surge will contribute to continued seaside erosion in areas which have already seen erosion from Hurricane Ian,” Gov. Ron DeSantis mentioned throughout a morning information convention. “The wind area from the storm may be very giant. We anticipate impacts to stretch far past the middle monitor.”
State Division of Emergency Administration Director Kevin Guthrie mentioned “robust wind gusts can be felt throughout your entire Florida peninsula, Massive Bend (area) and even over into the Panhandle.”
Nicole looms as Florida continues recovering from Hurricane Ian, which made landfall Sept. 28 as a Class 4 storm and induced widespread harm because it crossed the state. Like DeSantis, Nationwide Climate Service meteorologist Kelly Godsey pointed to Nicole exacerbating seaside erosion attributable to Ian.
“We’re going to see an extended interval of onshore winds and excessive surf, even earlier than the middle of the storm will get to the coast,” Godsey mentioned. “That’s simply going to worsen the seaside erosion that has already been ongoing, that Hurricane Ian induced when it went previous the world.”
A hurricane warning was in impact Wednesday morning from Boca Raton to the border of Volusia and Flagler counties. Additionally on the East Coast, a tropical-storm warning was in impact from Hallandale Seashore to Boca Raton and from the Volusia-Flagler border all the best way north to South Carolina. On the Gulf Coast, a tropical-storm warning was in impact from Bonita Seashore in Southwest Florida to Indian Go within the Panhandle.
Biden’s emergency declaration, which made obtainable federal help to state and native response efforts, lined 40 counties. DeSantis earlier issued an government order that declared a state of emergency for 34 counties.
Electrical utilities additionally had been getting ready for energy outages from the storm. For instance, Duke Power Florida mentioned Wednesday it was staging about 5,000 employees to reply to outages. That features bringing in crews from a number of different states.
“We anticipate this storm will convey robust winds and heavy rain over many elements of our Florida service territory, together with areas nonetheless recovering from Hurricane Ian,” Todd Fountain, Duke Power Florida storm director, mentioned in a ready assertion. “Crews and sources are being staged in secure areas all through the state to reply to outages as quickly because it’s secure to take action.”
Equally, Florida Energy & Gentle, which offers electrical energy alongside many of the East Coast, mentioned Tuesday it had mobilized about 13,000 employees to reply to the storm.
“If this storm is coming in with 75 to 80 mph winds, these might be damaging,” Godsey, the meteorologist, mentioned. “These can convey down lots of timber and energy strains. Houses that aren’t constructed to resist robust winds can undergo some structural harm as nicely.”
Florida
3 most underrated signees in Florida State football's 2025 class
Florida State football had an embarrassing 2024 campaign where it finished with a 2-10 record. This is not the expectation of what the Seminoles are all about.
Head football coach Mike Norvell understood the urgency as he could not allow the program to snowball into a laughing stock after a productive 13-1 season in 2023. Norvell was heading into a pivotal sixth season with his job on the line.
As a result, he went out and hired a ton of new coaches on his staff, including Gus Malzahn, Tim Harris Jr., Herb Hand, Tony White, Terrance Knighton, and Evan Cooper. This was uncharted territory for Norvell since he had never had to fire multiple coaches like that.
Nonetheless, we were wondering how the Seminoles’ 2025 recruiting class would play out with new coaches as well as the struggling year in 2024.
The recruiting class did well, and it finished with the 20th-best in the 247Sports Composite rankings (prospects can still sign in February). In this article, I want to highlight three of the most underrated signees from Florida State’s 2025 recruiting class.
Florida
U.S. Amateur runner-up Noah Kent is transferring to Florida
Noah Kent is heading home.
The 2024 U.S. Amateur runner-up is transferring to Florida, he announced Saturday. The sophomore at Iowa, whose hometown is Naples, Florida, entered the transfer portal earlier this month, and he made his decision to join coach J.C. Deacon and the 2023 national champions come next fall.
Because of NCAA rules, Kent won’t be eligible to compete for Florida until the 2025-26 season, but he can finish his sophomore year with the Hawkeyes. This fall, he placed in the top 13 all four tournaments, his best finish being a T-5 at the Fighting Irish Classic.
And, of course, he has a tee time at Augusta National Golf Club in the spring.
Kent will essentially be the fourth member of Florida’s 2025 signing class, which ranked second in the country on signing day. He’ll join a talented roster that includes Parker Bell, Mathew Kress and Jack Turner, though with new NCAA roster limits coming, there’s bound to be some unprecedented roster turnover in college golf before the start of the 2025-26 season.
Florida
State Your Case: Do Panthers or Lightning own state of Florida? | NHL.com
There are two NHL teams in Florida: the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning.
They are separated by about 250 miles and have been fierce rivals since the Panthers joined the NHL for the 1993-94 season. The Lightning joined the League a season earlier.
Florida (21-11-2) and Tampa Bay (18-10-2) meet for the first time this season at Amalie Arena in Tampa on Sunday (5 p.m. ET; FDSNSUN, CRIPPS, SN, TVAS).
The teams have played each other 157 times in the regular season; the Panthers have gone 77-51-19, and the Lightning are 70-64-13. There have been 10 ties.
For years, the rivalry was a parochial affair, deeply important to hockey fans in the state but under the radar nationally. Lately, though, Florida supremacy has often meant NHL supremacy.
The Panthers are the reigning Stanley Cup champions and defeated the Lightning in five games in the best-of-7 Eastern Conference First Round last season to start that title march. They reached the Stanley Cup Final two seasons ago, going on a miracle run before losing to the Vegas Golden Knights. The season before that, they won the Presidents’ Trophy with an NHL-best 122 points but lost to the Lightning in a second-round sweep, marking the second straight time that their noisy neighbors ended their season.
The Lightning won back-to-back Stanley Cup championships in 2020 and 2021 before reaching a third straight Final in 2022, losing to the Colorado Avalanche. Tampa Bay won the Presidents’ Trophy in 2018-19.
This season, each team is on course for another appearance in the Stanley Cup Playoffs and has a point percentage of better than .600.
So which team has the merits to claim bragging rights in this all-Florida showdown as the rivals face off for the first time this season? That’s the question debated by NHL.com senior writers Amalie Benjamin and Dan Rosen in the latest installment of State Your Case.
Benjamin: Let’s lay out what the Lightning have accomplished in their 32-season history: They’ve won the Stanley Cup three times, becoming the first team from Florida to win it when they took the championship in 2004. But that doesn’t come close to what they’ve accomplished during the past 11 seasons, starting in 2013-14, when they became a powerhouse. They’ve been to the Stanley Cup Playoffs 10 times in those 11 seasons, making the Stanley Cup Final in a whopping four of them. Let me repeat that: Four trips to the Cup Final in the past 11 seasons, winning twice, in 2020 and 2021. And if that’s not enough, they made two more trips to the Eastern Conference Final, in 2016 and 2018. Forget Florida’s team. They’re the team of the past decade in the entire NHL.
Rosen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what have you done for me lately? Florida’s team fluctuates. It was the Lightning. It is the Panthers. They’ve got the Stanley Cup. They went to the Stanley Cup Final two years in a row. Sure, a few years ago, this wasn’t even a debate. Florida’s team, the Panthers? Please. No shot. Even the top executives with the Panthers would tell you that. But things change. With success come the riches. Just think about the past three seasons for the Panthers: Presidents’ Trophy winners in 2021-22, Stanley Cup Final in 2022-23, Stanley Cup champions in 2023-24. The Lightning lost in the 2022 Cup Final, lost in the first round in six games the next season and lost in the first round in five games to the Panthers last season. Florida’s team is Florida.
Benjamin: OK, sure, you have a point. Florida has done pretty darn well lately. But let’s see how history will judge the state of Florida and its hockey teams. Hall of Famers? The Lightning have got ’em. Though Steven Stamkos has moved on to the Nashville Predators, the Hall of Fame is going to come calling, and the forward will go in as a member of the Lightning. Add in coach Jon Cooper, forward Nikita Kucherov, defenseman Victor Hedman and goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy, and you’re talking at least five future Hall of Famers on a single team. That’s not just good, that’s historically good. It’s a group whose names are synonymous with winning, with the Stanley Cup, with the state of Florida. That’s powerful. That says the Lightning win this debate, no question.
Rosen: I have a question. Is Aleksander Barkov not paving his way to the Hall of Fame? Is Sergei Bobrovsky, with a Stanley Cup ring, 400-plus wins and two Vezina Trophy wins as the NHL’s best goalie, not a lock for the Hall of Fame? Is Paul Maurice, who could finish his career with at least the second-most coaching wins of all time, along with his Stanley Cup ring, not also a lock for the Hall of Fame? In the way-too-early department, could Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Reinhart be future Hall of Famers? I lied. That’s four questions. But you get the point. You brought up the Hall of Fame and I countered. That’s why the Lightning do not win this debate without question. Could they win it? Yes, certainly, if we were having this debate in 2023. It’s almost 2025. It’s a different world. It’s the Panthers’ world, at least in Florida. The Lightning are just living in it. At least the sun is still shining on them too.
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