Tropical storm Gordon was running out of steam yesterday as it headed through Georgia toward the Carolinas after swamping coastal roads and flooding homes in north-west and central Florida.
Gordon, a hurricane for much of Sunday as it hurtled across the Gulf of Mexico toward landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast, had already lost force when its eye crossed the coast at Cedar Key in the "Big Bend" area, where 280,000 people were ordered to evacuate.
It was further weakened as it passed over land and by yesterday morning it was downgraded to a tropical depression, with maximum sustained winds of around 35 m.p.h., the US National Hurricane Centre said. Tropical storm warnings were lifted for the Atlantic coasts of north Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
On Sunday evening, kayakers paddled in the flooded streets of west Florida coast towns as Gordon brought down power lines, uprooted trees and spawned several tornadoes. Some 40 homes were flooded in Hillsborough County on Tampa Bay, the Florida state emergency centre said.
At the height of the storm, some 120,000 power customers were without electricity, mostly in the area around Tampa, one of Florida's largest cities. Tornadoes were reported in Hernando, Citrus and Volusia counties, and another shredded carports and damaged several mobile homes in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. Rains from Gordon caused death and mayhem last week in Guatemala, Central America, where 19 people were killed and more than 50 hurt. Hundreds of people fled their homes, fearing flooding and landslides.
Christine Newman adds:
Irish holidaymakers in the Florida region, most of whom are in the Orlando area, have been unaffected by the storm, which tour representatives say has passed over and is blowing north.
The two main Irish tour operators to the region, Budget Travel and JWT Holidays, who between them have over 2,000 clients there, said that no tourists had to be transferred from their accommodation and flights had not been disrupted.
At American Holidays a spokeswoman said that although she believed there had been evacuation in some areas, nothing had affected its customers.