Nicholas crawls into Louisiana from Texas, dumping rain

Nicholas weakened to a tropical depression as it crawled from Texas into southern Louisiana on Wednesday, unleashing heavy rain across a landscape where Hurricane Ida destroyed thousands of rooftops now covered with flimsy tarps.

Forecasters said Nicholas would slow to a stall over central Louisiana through Thursday, with plenty of water still to dump east of its center, drenching the Gulf Coast as far as the western Florida Panhandle. Southeast Louisiana faced the biggest flooding threat, and Gov. John Bel Edwards warned people to take it seriously, even though Nicholas was no longer the hurricane that made landfall in Texas on Tuesday.

"This is a very serious storm, particularly in those areas that were so heavily impacted by Hurricane Ida," Edwards said.

Forecasters warned people along the central Gulf Coast that up to 50 centimetres are possible through Friday in places across a region still recovering from Category 4 hurricanes -- Ida weeks ago and Laura last year.

Galveston, Texas, recorded nearly 35 centimetres of rain from Nicholas, the 14th named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, while Houston reported more than 15 centimetres. The New Orleans office of the National Weather Service said late Tuesday that as much as 25 centimetres of rain could fall in parts of Louisiana, with some areas seeing particularly intense periods of 5 to 8 centimetres of rainfall per hour.