Tropical Storm Gabrielle charged ashore on Florida's west coast yesterday, lashing the already soggy state with torrential rains and hurricane-force winds that severed power lines and toppled trees.
Schools and many government offices were closed along the Gulf coast as the storm, packing sustained winds of 70 m.p.h. (113 k.p.h.), pushed across the coast near Venice, south of Tampa, the most populous city on the west side of Florida.
Gabrielle was expected to dump up to 10 inches (25 cm) of rain on a state soaked by downpours for the past week, raising the prospect of overflowing rivers and canals.
Authorities closed the Sunshine Skyway bridge, spanning Tampa Bay between St Petersburg and Manatee County, due to high winds.
The storm spawned at least one tornado, near Melbourne on the east coast, and left at least 100,000 people without power on the west coast, Florida's emergency management agency said.
"There's some coastal flooding and some inland," said Jim Loftus, a spokesman for the agency. "No reports of flooding rivers yet but that's a concern for us in the next few days."
Florida Power Corp, a Progress Energy unit that provides electricity for much of the region, said it was bringing in workers from outside the state in case they were needed for repairs.
Emergency officials in the St Petersburg area said they did not think an evacuation of beach areas was needed and urged residents to ride the storm out inside their homes.
At 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), Gabrielle's centre was over land about 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Sarasota, the US National Hurricane Center said. Its maximum winds dropped to 60 m.p.h. (97 k.p.h.) as it moved over land, and it was expected to weaken further as it crossed the state.
It was moving to the northeast at 15 m.p.h. (24 k.p.h.) on a path across the Florida peninsula north of Lake Okeechobee, a major freshwater reservoir for a state that has been suffering under water restrictions for months amid one of its worst droughts in a century.
Forecasters said the storm could be a drought-breaker, filling the lake that helps provide water to the five million people in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area.
But Florida was soaked by heavy rain during the last week, raising the prospect of flooding. "The ground is already soaked. The rivers and canals are full. Anything above that could cause trouble," National Hurricane Center meteorologist Laura Salvador said.
Gabrielle was expected to leave the state around Cocoa Beach on the east coast, near the Kennedy Space Center, from which NASA launches space shuttles.
A tropical storm warning, alerting residents to storm conditions within 24 hours, was in effect on Florida's west coast from Flamingo north to the mouth of the Suwannee River and in the Florida Keys from Craig Key west to the Dry Tortugas.
A tropical storm warning on the east coast was extended from north of the Jupiter Inlet in Florida to Brunswick, Georgia.
A hurricane watch along the Florida west coast was dropped because the storm was not expected to reach hurricane intensity, as was earlier thought. Tropical storms become hurricanes when sustained winds reach 74 m.p.h. (119 k.p.h.)