Tropical Storm Nicholas drenched Texas and parts of Louisiana Tuesday (Sept. 14), dumping more than 10 inches of rain within hours of making landfall on the Gulf Coast as a category 1 hurricane.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s National Hurricane Center has warned that the storm will bring heavy rain and trigger "life-threatening flash floods" across Texas and the neighboring Louisiana, which is still recovering from the rampage of Hurricane Ida only two weeks ago. Southern parts of Mississippi and Alabama will also be hit. After making landfall early Tuesday as a hurricane, Nicholas has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, center officials said.
The heavy rain is the most threatening aspect of Nicholas, according to meteorologists. The storm has soaked up large amounts of atmospheric moisture from the tropics, as can be seen in visualizations released by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies.
Related: Hurricane Ida from space: Photos from astronauts and satellites
The hurricane made landfall near Houston, the home of NASA's Johnson Space Center, earlier today, but no information has been made available so far about the effects on the space agency's hub responsible for managing operations at the International Space Station.
Weather.com reported that the storm hit Texas with wind gusts of 95 mph (153 kph) pouring 11 inches (28 centimeters) of rain on the Houston metropolitan area within hours with more to come. In addition to the swelling creeks and rivers, storm surge submerged roads and land in the vicinity of the coast.
Power cuts affected at least half a million Texans and the state's Governor, Greg Abbott, declared a state of emergency for 17 counties, including the metropolitan Houston area.
Nicholas will affect many areas along the Gulf Coast, including Louisiana's vibrant cultural hub New Orleans, NOAA predicted. The storm is now expected to move eastward and trail along the coast towards Louisiana, reaching New Orleans on Saturday (Sept. 18) as a tropical depression.
Nicholas is the sixth hurricane of the 2021 Atlantic season. Since satellite monitoring began, only nine years have recorded six and more hurricanes by mid-September, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison's meteorologist Philip Klotzbach.
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