Nicholas, Now Tropical Storm, Dumps Rain Along Gulf Coast

Millions along the Texas Gulf Coast are being battered by torrential rain and ferocious wind.

Tropical Storm Nicholas hit the Texas coast early Tuesday as a hurricane and dumped more than a foot of rain along the same area swamped by Hurricane Harvey in 2017, drenching storm-battered Louisiana, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people and bringing the potential for life-threatening flash floods across the Deep South. Nicholas made landfall on the eastern part of the Matagorda Peninsula and was soon downgraded to a tropical storm. It was about 15 miles south-southwest of Houston, Texas, with maximum winds of 60 mph as of 7 a.m. CDT Tuesday, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Nicholas was the 14th named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. Galveston saw nearly 14 inches of rain from Nicholas while Houston reported more than 6 inches of rain — a fraction of what fell during Harvey, which dumped more than 60 inches of rain in southeast Texas over a four-day period.