HOUSTON, United States (AFP)— Hurricane Beryl made landfall Monday in the southern US state of Texas, killing at least two people and causing millions to lose power amid dangerous winds and flooding, as some coastal areas remained under evacuation orders.

The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Beryl hit the town of Matagorda as a Category 1 hurricane, and has since been downgraded to a tropical storm in the hours following impact.

Farther inland, rain and wind lashed Houston, home to 2.3 million people, as the NHC warned in its latest bulletin of “life-threatening storm surge, damaging wind gusts and flooding rainfall” across southeastern Texas.

“We have to take Beryl very, very seriously. Our worst enemy is complacency,” Houston Mayor John Whitmire said ahead of the hurricane’s arrival.

Some 2.6 million households were without electricity as of midday Monday, according to the poweroutage.us tracker.

Falling trees killed two people in the Houston area: a 53-year-old man who became trapped under debris when a tree fell on a house and a 74-year-old woman who was separately struck by a tree falling on a residence, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez wrote on X.

George Bush Intercontinental Airport was facing more than 500 flight cancellations, according to tracking service FlightAware, while the National Weather Service warned of the potential for tornadoes.

The NHC said rainfall of up to 15 inches (38 centimetres) was expected in parts of Texas, warning that it could cause flash flooding in some areas.

Several areas of the Texas coast had already been placed under hurricane and storm warnings over the weekend.