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 Abbot, 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 playing land in “ the next few hours ” on the coast of Texas and that will move over the southeastern part of this state Southerners on Tuesday before entering Louisiana on Wednesday.
Downtown Nicholas was locates 30 kilometers southeast of Matagorda and 75 miles southwest of Freeport, while moving about 17 kilometers per hour.
The hurricane is expected to maintain its current strength until landfall, when it is expected to weaken and become a tropical storm again in the middle of this week .
So far from 2021 six hu Racans in the Atlantic , Elsa, Grace, Henri, Ida, Larry and now Nicholas, of which Grace, Ida and Larry reached Category 3 or more.
While cyclones Andrés, Blanca, Carlos, Dolores, Enrique, Felicia, Guillermo, Hilda, Ignacio, Jimena, Kevin have formed in the Pacific Ocean , Linda, Marty, Nora and Olaf. Dolores made landfall in mid-June and left three dead in electrical storms .