Hurricane Nicholas brings deadly floods to the South and leaves 50,000 without power in Texas

Hurricane Nicholas

© REUTERS / Adrees Latif

Tropical Storm Nicholas was upgraded to a Category 1 hurricane with wind gusts of up to 90 miles per hour (145 kilometers per hour) before making landfall in Texas early Tuesday morning. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicts "life-threatening" flash floods in the southern United States in the following days, in addition to severe power disruptions.

Even though Hurricane Nicholas was downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved inland from the gulf coast on Tuesday morning - at 3 a.m. CDT - the National Hurricane Center has issued several advisories for Texas and nearby Louisiana.

Tropical Storm Nicholas had averaged maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (72 kph) to 65 mph as of 1:00 p.m. CDT, according to the National Hurricane Center (105 kph). As the system pauses over the southern US state, forecasters have warned that an already storm-soaked Louisiana could be struck with life-threatening floodwaters.

Texas appears to be on the mend in terms of power outages since almost 500,000 outages were reported around the time Nicholas made landfall.

According to PowerOutage, about 266,000 houses are still without electricity at this time.

Louisiana has also been heavily struck by outages, with over 96,000 reported as of the publication of this story.

According to Houston's ABC13, CenterPoint Energy, a major electric and natural gas utility, personnel has been dispatched in the hopes of restoring electricity. However, consumers may have outages lasting five to seven days.

According to officials, CenterPoint has sent approximately 3,200 resources. Customers have been advised to avoid electrical lines that have fallen.

Nicholas is predicted to weaken more on Tuesday before becoming a tropical depression later in the week, possibly by Wednesday.

Publish : 2021-09-15 11:41:00

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