Hurricane Nicholas slammed into parts of Texas and Louisiana with heavy rain, power outages and the threat of flash floods and storm surges early Tuesday. The good news is it has slowed to a tropical storm with sustained winds reduced to 45-60 mph as it moved inland from the Gulf Coast, bringing the threat of flooding in much of the deep south.
Harris County Texas, which includes Houston and is one of the most populous counties in the country, was bracing for sever rainfall and disruption, with the warnings of possible flooding in the south part of the county. As of 10:00 a.m. CT the storm’s center was just 10 miles southeast of Houston.
The same flash flood warning covered parts of Brazoria County, Chambers County and Galveston County, where heavy rainfall continually fell overnight and throughout this morning.
Ahead of landfall, Gov. Greg Abbott issues an emergency declaration for 17 counties in the storm’s path. “Texans throughout the Gulf Coast should prepare now for the impact of the storm, which is expected to b ring severed rain and flooding to these communities,” Abbott said in a press release.
Nicholas reached shore 70 miles from where historic Hurrican Harvey made landfall in 2017, and actually closer to Houston, which was overwhelmed by the Category 4 storm’s deadly flooding killed dozens of people.
More than 510,000 Texas homes and businesses were without power, most in and around the Houston metropolitan area, according to utility tracking website poweroutage.us. In addition, there were estimated around 100,000 more were in the dark in Louisiana, although a large majority of those outages, is a remnant of Hurricane Ida, two weeks ago.
When Nicholas was named Sunday, it became the 14th named storm of the 2021 season, matching the climatological average number of named storms per season. Nicholas was the eighth store to make landfall on the U.S. so far this year.
Fortunately, there hasn’t been any reports of loss of life or injuries thus far. This is an ongoing event and will be updated with in any future changes.
