Texas energy company CenterPoint Energy Inc said on Tuesday that about 400,000 homes and businesses in its Houston-area service territory were without power as Tropical Storm Nicholas drenches the city.

According to Reuters, That represents about 17% of CenterPoint’s power customers in the Houston area. Nicholas was currently located about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south-southwest of Houston and could cause life-threatening flash floods across the Deep South during the next couple of days, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

Other utilities in Texas reported much fewer outages, counting around 60,000 customers without power so far. Separately, the South Texas nuclear plant, located near the Texas coast about 90 miles south of Houston, continued to operate at full power Tuesday morning, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.


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Accuweather reported that cars underwater and boats floating adrift are what residents in Kemah and Seabrook, Texas, woke up to on Tuesday morning, as AccuWeather National Reporter Bill Wadell reported from the damaged areas.

The impacts of Nicholas, which struck the area with hurricane-force early Tuesday morning, left docks ripped to pieces and “several streets looking more like canals,” Wadell said. He added that they met one man trying to navigate the flooded streets in a kayak, while another Seabrook resident, John Lambert, told AccuWeather that he went to bed underestimating Nicholas on Monday.

“It started off kind of slow and then it worked up to a good howl about 2 o’clock in the morning, started rolling in, and noticed a lot of branches and trees coming down,” Lambert said. “And then the rain started picking up a little bit, as Forrest Gump said, started ‘coming in sideways.’