Nicholas makes landfall along the Texas coast, weakens to tropical storm
TAMPA, Fla. - After making landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on the Texas coast overnight, Nicholas became a tropical storm again. The system will be a big rainmaker across Texas and Louisiana as it is projected to slow down and weaken.
Nicholas touched down on the eastern part of the Matagorda Peninsula, about 10 miles west southwest of Sargent Beach, Texas, with maximum winds of 75 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. Nicholas was the 14th named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season.
"It’s starting to slow down. Over the course of the next few days, it’s just not going to move much. That’s a problem. That’s a big problem," says FOX 13's meteorologist Dave Osterberg, "because unfortunately, somebody is going to get 10-15 inches of rain, or more, with this system depending on where exactly it sets up shop."
"Once this really starts to slow down," he added, "what’s going to happen then is you’re picking moisture up from the Gulf and just throwing it over the same spots over and over again."
LINK: Track the tropics with MyFOXHurricane.com
The storm was moving north northeast at 10 mph and the center of Nicholas was expected to move slowly over southeastern Texas on Tuesday and over southwestern Louisiana on Wednesday. The biggest unknown about Nicholas was how much rainfall it would produce in Texas, especially in flood-prone Houston.
The rainfall forecast shows 7-10 inches over a two-state area in ranging from Houston all the way to New Orleans.
"It’s going to be a problem and the problem is starting now, and it will be going on over the next few days, unfortunately, for those folks," Osterberg said.
Nearly all of the state’s coastline was under a tropical storm warning that included potential flash floods and urban flooding. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said authorities placed rescue teams and resources in the Houston area and along the coast.
MORE: Let it blow? Hurricane naming quirk has tropics reading like cast of Disney's ‘Frozen’
In Houston, officials worried that heavy rain expected to arrive by Tuesday could inundate streets and flood homes. Authorities deployed high-water rescue vehicles throughout the city and erected barricades at more than 40 locations that tend to flood, Mayor Sylvester Turner said.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency Sunday night, ahead of the storm’s arrival in a state still recovering from Hurricane Ida and last year’s Hurricane Laura and historic flooding.
"The most severe threat to Louisiana is in the southwest portion of the state, where recovery from Hurricane Laura and the May flooding is ongoing," Edwards said.
The storm was expected to bring the heaviest rainfall west of where Ida slammed into Louisiana two weeks ago.
Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said via Twitter that only four other years since 1966 have had 14 or more named storms by Sept. 12: 2005, 2011, 2012 and 2020.
The Associated Press contributed to this report