Several U.S. states are on flood alert Tuesday ahead of tropical storm Berylwhich has already left five dead in the south of the country.
Beryl could cause flash flooding “from the lower and middle Mississippi Valley to the Great Lakes” in the north on Wednesday as it sweeps across much of the United States, the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned.
Tornadoes are also possible Tuesday in parts of the south, the agency warned in its latest bulletin.
After crossing the Caribbean, Beryl made landfall in Texas on Monday as a Category 1 hurricane, bringing heavy rains that caused flooding and massive power outages.
Four people have died in the Houston area, according to the mayor of the large South Texas city and local police.
A municipal police officer died in the floods while trying to get to work, Mayor John Whitmire said, adding that another person died in a fire caused by lightning.
Two other deaths linked to falling trees had been announced earlier Monday by the authorities in the region.
Further north, in Benton County, Louisiana, a woman died after a tree fell on her home, local police said on Facebook.
Before reaching the United States, Beryl caused at least 10 deaths in the Caribbean and Venezuela, where it reached Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, the highest.
It was downgraded to a tropical storm on Monday, with weakening winds, the NHC said.
But the danger remains. Five tornadoes were recorded on Monday by the weather service in Texas and the NHC has warned of the risk of marine submersion on the coasts.
Early phenomenon
In Houston, uprooted trees and power poles blocked roads, and some lanes remained impassable due to flooding.
“For a Category 1 storm, this is a lot of damage, it’s more than we expected,” Rose Michalec, a resident of the town, told AFP. Her house’s fence, like those of her neighbors, was torn off by the recent wind gusts.
“It’s only the beginning of July and it’s very rare that we get a storm of this magnitude,” said Floyd Robinson, 76, surveying the storm damage in a downtown park that was partly submerged by floodwaters.
In Texas, more than 2.4 million homes and businesses remained without power Monday evening, according to the website poweroutage.us, and residents were evacuated.
At the city’s main airport, more than 1,100 flights were cancelled on Monday, according to the FlightAware website, with the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) warning of tornadoes.
Along the Texas coast, AFP journalists saw several homes and buildings along the seafront whose roofs had been blown away by the winds.
It is extremely rare for a phenomenon of this power to occur so early in the season. Beryl is the earliest hurricane to hit the United States in 10 years, according to expert Michael Lowry.
Scientists say climate change, by warming ocean waters, makes it more likely that storms will intensify rapidly and increases the risk of more powerful hurricanes.