Diminished Ernesto weakens further over Florida

Tropical Storm Ernesto weakened over Florida yesterday diminishing to a rainstorm instead of a dreaded hurricane and bringing relief to Americans who remember the fury of Hurricane Katrina a year ago.

With its winds flagging as it limped northward over the Florida peninsula, the US National Hurricane Centre later stripped the cyclone of tropical-storm status and downgraded it to a tropical depression.

Ernesto, the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season's fifth storm, could regain some strength after it emerges off northeast Florida and curves back into land between North and South Carolina later this week, the Miami-based hurricane centre said.

But the centre lifted a hurricane watch for coastal areas of the Carolinas.

Ernesto failed to revive as expected over the warm waters of the Florida Straits after bashing Cuba. It sloshed weakly into Miami and the Florida Keys, where residents had lined up at gas stations, emptied stores of batteries and filled sandbags in anticipation of a stronger storm.

State officials had declared a state of emergency in Florida as the storm approached. Tourists were ordered out of the low-lying Florida Keys, courts and schools were closed, some airlines cancelled flights and ports were shut.

But surfers took advantage of big waves off Miami Beach, some restaurants and bars stayed open in tourist areas and the lights stayed on across most of the region. Wind gusts of 48-64 kph were reported in the Miami area.

There were no reports of serious damage or injuries, although local media said at least one traffic death occurred on a rain-slicked Miami road as the storm came ashore.

It was a far cry from encounters with hurricanes Wilma and Katrina last year, the latter of which killed about 1,500 people and caused $80 billion in damage on the US Gulf Coast.

Katrina, a monster storm, caused more than $500 million in insured losses in the Miami area before hitting the Gulf Coast. Wilma knocked out power to more than 90 per cent of Florida's residents and the damage toll on the peninsula reached $12 billion.

At 11 a.m. (1500 GMT), Ernesto's sustained winds had dropped to 56 kph, a day after the storm left the mountains of Cuba. Ernesto killed two people in Haiti on Sunday after briefly becoming the season's first hurricane with winds of at least 119 kph.

The storm's centre was about 89 km west-southwest of West Palm Beach, Florida, and was moving north at 16 kph, the hurricane centre said.

Tropical storms feed on warm waters, and the hurricane centre's specialists said they were puzzled that Ernesto had not gained power in the Florida Straits.

"The winds are much weaker than we feared they could be," the hurricane centre's Mark Knabb told Miami's WSVN television.

"We didn't think there was a really great chance of this becoming a hurricane but it didn't even come close and that's good news."