Nicholas Brings Wind, Flooding and Power Outages

Nicholas brought intense winds and flooding that blanketed streets and damaged homes in Texas as it came ashore and moved across land Tuesday. The storm strengthened into a hurricane before it roared ashore around 1:00 a.m. local time near Matagorda, TX. Winds gusted up to 95 mph there and video showed the storm surge enveloping coastal roads, according to weather.com.

Nicholas was downgraded to a tropical depression Tuesday night, but the threat of dangerous flooding remains as the storm’s remnants inch over land and dump rain across parts of the southeast, including many areas that are still recovering from previous storms.

Power was out across Texas after tree branches and power lines were toppled. About 255,000 homes, businesses and other utility customers were without power as of 3:10 p.m. yesterday, according to poweroutage.us. That number is about half of what it was in the first few hours after Nicholas came ashore. The bulk of the power outages were in areas outside of Houston, especially to the south along the coast. There was not a set timeline, but preliminary damage estimates did not indicate there would be massive, ongoing outages.

“Not a whole lot of downed trees, but there are lots of downed limbs and branches,” Francisco Sanchez with the Harris County Office of Emergency Management told Houston Public Media. “So, what that tells us is the restoration should go a lot smoother. It’s not like a Louisiana situation where you had the huge towers go down.”