WFTX, Fla. — While most people were sleeping in Southwest Florida, Nicholas strengthened to a Category One hurricane shortly before making landfall. Nicholas was downgraded to a tropical storm shortly after that though.
The storm brought with it some pretty strong winds reaching 75 mph at times, but local officials said they're more concerned about the rainfall and potential flooding right now.
The latest forecast track has Nicholas slowly moving across Texas and Louisiana state lines potentially bringing rainfall through Thursday. Rainfall totals from Monday morning show isolated areas in Galveston with more than 8 inches of rain and Lake Charles with almost 2 inches of rain.
However, The National Weather Service in Lake Charles tweeted Monday morning warning surrounding areas they could see close to 15 inches of rain as Nicholas inches closer to Louisiana.
Here are the parish by parish and county by county breakdown of expected impacts for tropical storm Nicholas. These impacts are subject to change should the forecast track or intensity change. ~ Donald Jones pic.twitter.com/tZpYegmZJf
— NWS Lake Charles (@NWSLakeCharles) September 13, 2021
Parts of the state are still recovering after Hurricane Ida flooded the area just a few weeks ago. To put the numbers into perspective, Houston's latest rainfall totals are already 1 inch above average for this time of the year. Typically the city sees 36.19 inches of rain between January 1st and this time of the year. While that isn't too drastic of a difference, Lafayette has seen 60 .9 inches in that time span which is 18 inches above average!
The ground is already very saturated in these areas from previous storms which will make flooding a big threat as this consistent rain continues to fall.
