Children are among at least six people who have died after Tropical Storm Debby caused catastrophic flooding in parts of the US.

Debby made landfall along the Gulf Coast of Florida as a category 1 hurricane early on Monday before weakening to a tropical storm in the afternoon.

Flood warnings were issued in coastal areas including Savannah in Georgia and Charleston in South Carolina on Monday as they were lashed by heavy rainfall.

Van Johnson, mayor of Savannah, told people in a social media livestream to “hunker down”, adding: “Expect that it will be a rough day.”

Experts have said the worst is yet to come as the storm system is expected to stall over the southeast of the US this week.

Northern Florida along with coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina and parts of North Carolina are braced for the most severe rain and flooding in the coming days as the storm moves up and east.

Forecasters have said the Debby storm system could pummel the southeast of the US with record rainfall in the coming days. Up to 20 inches of rain is predicted to fall on widespread areas and up to 30 inches in some places.

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Florida was hammered with torrential downpours on Monday which forced the rescue of around 500 people from flooded homes in the beach city of Sarasota.

It came as more than $1m (£782k) of cocaine washed up on a beach in Florida Keys amid the tropical storm, while a large sinkhole opened up in a road in Hillsborough County during heavy rainfall.

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More than 133,000 homes and businesses in Florida and around 23,300 homes in Georgia were still without power late on Monday night, data showed.

The number was down from a peak of 350,000 outages earlier that day.

Details of victims revealed

At least six people had died due to the storm as of Monday night, including a truck driver on Interstate 75 in the Tampa area.

The 64-year-old lost control of his tractor-trailer, which flipped over a concrete wall and dangled over the edge before the cab dropped into the water below.

Sheriff’s office divers located the man, from Mississippi, in the cab of the vehicle 12 metres below the surface of the water, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.

It came as a 12-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy were killed by falling trees in Levy County in Florida, officials said.

Meanwhile, in Dixie County in Florida, just east of where the storm made landfall, a 38-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy died in a car crash on wet roads on Sunday night.

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In southern Georgia, a 19-year-old man died when a large tree fell on to a porch at a home in Moultrie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Dan Ciarletta, from St Petersburg, Florida, filmed a video of a catfish that had ended up on his driveway after flooding hit the area.

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President Joe Biden has approved a request from South Carolina’s governor for an emergency declaration, following his earlier approval of a similar request from Florida.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said he has asked Mr Biden to issue a pre-emptive federal emergency declaration to speed the flow of federal aid to the state.

North Carolina is also under a state of emergency after Governor Roy Cooper declared it in an executive order signed on Monday.

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