Photo: National Hurricane Center (NHC) / Courtesy
Nicholas officially became a Category 1 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale Monday night while off the Texas coast, according to the National Hurricane Service (NHC) .
The governor of that state, Greg Abbott, declared a state of emergency in several counties and urged citizens not to leave their homes and take shelter until everything passes.
The hurricane already has maximum sustained winds that exceed 120 kilometers per hour. The NHC expects heavy rains to hit southeast Texas, Louisiana and southern Mississippi through Wednesday this week. In addition, they indicate that there could be urban flooding in East Texas .
These predictions point to Nicholas going a makes landfall at night off the Texas coast and will move over the southeastern part of the state on Tuesday before entering Louisiana on Wednesday.
The center of Nicholas was located at 30 kilometers southeast of Matagorda and 75 kilometers to the southwest of Freeport, while moving at about 17 miles per hour.
The hurricane was expected to maintain its current strength until it made landfall, when it was expected to weaken and become a storm again tropical in the middle of this week .
So far from 2021 six hurricanes have formed in the Atlantic , Elsa, Grace, Henri, Ida, Larry and now Nicholas, of which Grace, Ida and Larry reached Category 3 or more.
While in the Pacific Ocean the cyclones Andrés, Blanca, Carlos, Dolores, Enrique, Felicia, Guillermo, Hilda, Ignacio, Jimena, Kevin, Linda, Marty, Nora and Olaf have formed. Dolores made landfall in mid-June and left three dead in electrical storms .