One person has been confirmed dead in Texas after Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Gulf Coast, a local official said Saturday, adding that about a dozen other people suffered minor injuries.
"It was someone caught in a fire in his house during the storm," Aransas County judge CH "Burt" Mills told reporters, adding that officials were seeking to inform the victim's family.
The powerful storm left a trail of destruction after slamming into Texas, with officials warning of "catastrophic" flooding.
After tens of thousands of people fled its impending onslaught, Harvey flattened buildings and severed power across a swathe of the Gulf Coast that is home to some of the country's most important oil refineries.
Officials say the worst may yet be to come, with the real danger coming from rains likely to inundate Texas for several days.
Harvey made landfall late Friday as a Category Four hurricane, pummelling the small town of Rockport outside Corpus Christi with sustained winds of 130 miles (215 kilometres) per hour.
It then made a second landfall a few hours later just north of Rockport as a Category Three hurricane, with winds of 125 mph, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
While most residents did heed advice to head to safety, some hunkered down for the night in Corpus Christi - a city of about 325,000 - in buildings that seemed to bend in the wind.
"I've never seen anything like this. We do have strong winds - we're right next to the bay - but nothing like last night," store owner Brandon Gonzalez told AFP.
"I mean, I was even a little bit terrified of what was going to happen. Our building was just shaking back and forth. It really got bad. I think we held up pretty good though."
In the early hours of Saturday, Harvey lost strength as it moved inland and was downgraded to tropical storm status at midday.
But meteorologists said a vast area would face potentially devastating floods over the coming days, while some communities were hit by localised tornados.
Some areas could get up to 40 inches (more than 100 centimetres), according to the NHC, which warned of "extremely serious flooding."
"Rainfall of this magnitude will cause catastrophic and life-threatening flooding," it added.
Although Texas Governor Greg Abbott told a press conference there were no confirmed casualties thus far, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said there should be no illusions about the long-term impact.
"This is going to be an unprecedented long and frustrating event for the state of Texas," FEMA director Brock Long told MSNBC.
"The recovery from this disaster is going to be years."
