Hurricane Nicholas makes landfall, pounds coastal Texas, Louisiana with rain

Heavy rains fell across the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana on Tuesday as tropical storm Nicholas strengthened into a hurricane before making landfall, bringing the threat of widespread flooding, power outages and storm surges.

Nicholas was some 30 kilometres northeast of Matagorda, Texas as of 2 a.m. ET, heading northeast with maximum sustained winds of 120 km/h, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in a bulletin early on Tuesday. It made landfall along the Texas coast, the hurricane center said. U.S. President Joe Biden declared an emergency for Louisiana and ordered federal assistance to supplement local response efforts due to conditions resulting from Nicholas, the White House said. "It will be a very slow-moving storm across the state of Texas that will linger for several days and drop a tremendous amount of rain," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said. More than 90,000 people in Louisiana and more than 230,000 people in Texas faced outages as of early Tuesday, according to the website PowerOutage.us. Abbott declared states of emergency in 17 counties and three cities. He said boat and helicopter rescue teams had been deployed or placed on standby. Nicholas is the second hurricane in recent weeks to threaten the U.S. Gulf Coast. Hurricane Ida wreaked havoc in August, killing more than two dozen people and devastating communities in Louisiana near New Orleans.