There was little indication of how torrential the Texas downpours would become before dawn. At least 27 people were killed, many of them children at Camp Mystic.

Rescuers were searching for more than two dozen girls missing from a summer camp in Texas after a flash flood killed at least 50 people, 15 of them children. The Guadalupe River that runs through the Hill Country in central south Texas rose by 26ft (8 metres) in 45 minutes in the early hours of Friday,