Thousands of Americans flee for their lives as Hurricane Harvey charges Texas coast

Residents along a vast swathe of the Texas coast battened down the hatches and stocked up on emergency supplies as Hurricane Harvey crept closer to shore on Friday, threatening lashing rains and 110mph winds in what could be the first major hurricane to hit the United States in 12 years.

“This is a life-threatening situation,” the National Hurricane Centre in Miami warned residents in low-lying areas. “Catastrophic flooding expected across portions of southern and southeastern Texas.”

Harvey is projected to make landfall near Corpus Christi late on Friday or early Saturday. A hurricane warning is in effect along a wide stretch of the coastline from Port Mansfield to Sargent, spanning a region home to about 4 million people. An additional 12 million, many in the major cities of Houston and San Antonio, are under a tropical storm warning.

By Thursday afternoon, all northbound lanes of Interstate 37 out of Corpus Christi were backed up with cars as residents made their way out of the path of a hurricane that forecasters said will bring devastating flooding along the middle Texas coast over the weekend.

The National Weather Service office in Corpus Christi cautioned that the extreme rainfall could be “devastating to catastrophic,” and that the current threat to life and property was “extreme.”

Rivers and tributaries could overflow their banks, and streets and car parks become “rivers of raging water with underpasses submerged,” the weather service said.