After winds of 200 kilometres per hour, the deluge has arrived. Hurricane Harvey, the most powerful ever recorded in the United States since 2005, is striking Texas in these hours, with its most important city, Houston, not being spared.

The hurricane is moving very slowly across Texas

Governor Greg Abbott spoke of a "serious situation that will worsen further". Torrential rainfall and "extremely severe" flooding are indeed forecast. No official death toll has been provided so far, but US media have confirmed the deaths of at least two people (some sources already indicate five fatalities). They are a man who was trapped in his home, which caught fire in the Rockport area, and a woman who drowned in the streets of Houston. Some images gathered on the Washington Post website show the situation deteriorating hour by hour, also due to the extremely slow movement of the depression, at a speed of just four kilometres per hour.

NWS Weather Prediction Center @NWSWPC

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Here's a look at the rainfall totals for Days 1-7 (thru Sat). Very heavy additional amounts still expected over portions of SE TX! #txwx

♥ 36💬 1 26 ago 2017 · Apri su X →

Days of exceptional rainfall expected. Houston submerged

In the final hours before making landfall, the hurricane increased in strength until it was classified as category 4 (on a scale that goes up to 5). The damage is enormous: 230,000 people are already without electricity, tens of thousands of homes have had their roofs torn off, trees have been uprooted, roads submerged. And weather forecasts point to several more days of exceptionally intense rainfall, with estimated accumulations of between 60 and 100 centimetres.

President Donald Trump has granted a natural disaster declaration to Texas, although fortunately the provisional toll appears significantly less severe than that caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which left more than 1,800 victims in its wake.