A tornado has left at least one American killed and another injured as it swept through a rural area of north Texas destroying two houses.

The injured person is in critical condition, said Chief Walter Fairbanks, the fire chief in the town of Cisco in Eastland County. Considerable damage was reported in the area on Saturday, he added.

“We can’t exactly tell what ... we’ve got just yet,” said Rex Fields, the Eastland County judge and local emergency management coordinator. “We don’t even have everybody accounted for.”

The tropical storm Ana is predicted to push dangerous surf and drenching rains up against the Southeast coast.

Ana was centered at 8 a.m. about 115 miles south of Wilmington, North Carolina and about 100 miles, southeast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, according to the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The storm raged with top-sustained winds blowing at of 60mph.

Dangerous surf and rip tides seem to be the greatest threat posed by the Atlantic season's first tropical storm, said senior hurricane specialist Stacy Stewart.

“We had a similar situation occur twice back in 2012 when we had two early season tropical storms, Alberto and Beryl,” said Stewart.

She pointed to two storms that also emerged in May, saying, “That was very unusual to get two storms before the normal start of the hurricane season; one is not that unusual.”

However, Ana was the earliest subtropical or tropical storm to form in the Atlantic since another similar storm emerged in 2003, according to the Hurricane Center.

The Atlantic season officially runs from June 1 to November 30, a period experts regard as the most likely for tropical activity in the ocean basin.

SB/AT