Hurricane Nicholas makes landfall in Texas, threatening Houston and Louisiana ravaged by Ida

Hurricane Nicholas became a Category 1 storm as it made landfall near Matagorda Bay, Texas, early Tuesday, with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph. The National Hurricane Center warned Monday evening that “life-threatening flash flooding, particularly in urbanized metropolitan areas, is possible in parts of the upper Texas Gulf Coast to extreme southwest Louisiana.” . The streets of Matagorda Beach were already flooded by the storm surge, meteorologist and storm chaser Reed Timmer documented early Tuesday.

Even before Nicholas made landfall, tens of thousands of Texans in the greater Houston area and elsewhere on the coast were without power. The main concern for Nicholas is that it will move slowly across Texas and into southwest Louisiana, dumping more than a foot of rain in areas, especially Houston, that are prone to flooding. Nearly all of coastal Texas was under a tropical storm warning, and Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) declared a state of emergency Sunday evening, noting that his state is still recovering from not only Hurricane Ida, but also Hurricane Laura and last year’s flooding. in May.

Houston, devastated by slow-moving Hurricane Harvey in 2017, is bracing for more flooding Tuesday and Wednesday, but Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, said he thinks Nicholas “will be lower than Harvey at all respects.” The Houston school district, the largest in Texas, is closed until Tuesday and Harry Styles had to cancel his show in Houston on Monday night. “Safety must be the priority, so go home and be safe,” he tweeted. “I’m really sorry, thank you for your understanding.”

Nicholas is the 14th named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. The only other years since 1996 with 14 or more storms as of Sept. 12 were 2005, 2011, 2012 and 2020, according to Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University.

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