More than 30,000,000 people are at risk of severe weather along the USA’s Gulf Coast (Picture: AP/REX)
Monster storms have killed at least four people – including a new mother – and left more than a million homes without power.
Houston is a powerhouse of Texas, home to much of its technology and energy industries, with an economy larger than those of Iran or Colombia.
But much of the metro area’s population of seven million people has been left in darkness thanks to powerful thunderstorms.
It could be weeks before power is restored in Texas’ second biggest city.
Hurricane-force winds of 100mph battered the coastal metropolis, causing ‘considerable damage downtown’, according to city mayor, John Whitmire.
Video footage shows trees swaying violently in the wind as flashes of lighting illuminate a sky concealed by heavy rain.
A car crushed by falling bricks (Picture: David J. Phillip/AP)
The downfall was so intense, Houston’s weather service issued flash flood and severe thunderstorm warnings for several Texas counties.
The mayor said: ‘It was fierce, it was intense, it was quick and most Houstonians didn’t have time to get themselves out of harm’s way.’
A mother of a newborn baby was among those killed in the thunderstorm. At least four, possibly five, people died.
Two of those deaths were caused by falling trees. Another was killed when winds blew down a crane.
Winds were so strong they blew down the wall of this building (Picture: David J. Phillip/AP)
Walls and the roofs of buildings caved during the storm, leave bricks and wood strewn across the ground.
Debris, glass and electrical wires line the streets of Houston after hundreds of windows were shattered on high-rise buildings and power lines were blown down.
Cars were trapped beneath toppled trees, or crushed under falling bricks.
At least 2,500 traffic lights are no longer working, causing a possible hazard for drivers, AP reported.
Such high up windows seem a real pain to fix (Picture: Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the most senior elected official in the county home to Houston, said: ‘We are going to have to talk about this disaster in weeks, not days.’
After leaving a trail of death and destruction in Texas, the storm struck neighbouring Louisiana.
There a further 215,000 households are without power.
More than 30million people are at risk of severe weather sweeping coastal regions of the Gulf of Mexico, the BBC reported.
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