A tropical storm dragged across Louisiana Thursday, leaving a trail of damage and warnings of floods after Hurricane Humberto battered Texas, authorities said, as one man was reported killed.

The storm moved east into in Louisiana, passing the city of Lake Charles where strong winds "took the roof off a trailer, knocked down some trees, some power lines," John Butterick of the local county emergency preparedeness department told AFP.

"We have a couple of areas that are without power but crews are already on the scene restoring that," he said. Weather authorities had warned of possible flooding but none was reported so far, he added.

Similar damage struck earlier in southeastern Texas, where Humberto downed power lines and left roads closed after hitting land Thursday morning, a local official said.

It was downgraded to a tropical storm later on Thursday.

"Power lines are down, the roads are closed" near High Island where the storm blasted ashore, the official in the Galveston County sheriff's office, who declined to be named, told AFP.

He declined to confirm whether anyone was harmed. But CNN citing authorities reported that the storm killed an 80-year-old man in Texas as it blasted by, packing winds up to 135 kilometers (85 miles) per hour.

Television pictures showed roads flooded with several inches of rain and mobile homes flipped over on their sides.

Humberto emerged as a tropical storm over the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday and suddenly mushroomed into a hurricane just before slamming ashore on the Texas coast early Thursday.

The weakened storm still packed "damaging winds" near its center, could cause some coastal flooding in Louisiana and might spawn tornadoes, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said in its latest statement.

Humberto was expected to dump five to 10 inches (12.5 to 25 centimeters) of rain across southern states including Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, according to the center.

Lake Charles Mayor Randy Roach in a statement called on residents to stay off the streets until the storm passed the city, which it appeared to have done by early afternoon, according to Butterick.

Humberto was the third hurricane of the 2007 Atlantic storm season, following two maximum category five storms that slammed Mexico and Central America in August and earlier this month.

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, whose state still has fresh memories from the deadly Hurricane Katrina of 2005, had already declared a state of emergency as a precautionary measure on Wednesday.

In Texas, Governor Rick Perry activated search and rescue teams, including six black hawk helicopters, 50 military vehicles and 200 soldiers.

Central America and Mexico were hit by two massive category five hurricanes in past weeks, leaving more than 130 people dead in the region.

Hurricane Felix slammed into Nicaragua earlier this month with winds of up to 260 kilometers (160 miles) per hour, killing more than 100.

In August, Hurricane Dean left around 30 people dead after it stormed into Mexico's Caribbean coast.