Strengthening tropical storm Fay soaks Florida

MIAMI (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Fay swept into southwest Florida from the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, dumping heavy rain but causing little damage after failing to strengthen into a hurricane as forecasters had predicted.

At 1 p.m. EDT (6:00 p.m. British time), the storm was over south-central Florida near Lake Okeechobee, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

Unusually, the storm strengthened as it moved inland across the Florida Peninsula. Tropical storms are powered by warm ocean waters and generally weaken quickly over land.

But the land in Fay's path was so warm and swampy that "it might not register that it's really land at this point," said Corey Walton, a hurricane support meteorologist at the Miami-based hurricane center.

Fay's top sustained winds rose to 65 miles per hour (105 km per hour), making it slightly stronger than it was when it passed over the Florida Keys and came ashore in southwest Florida but still below the 74 mph (119 kph) threshold at which tropical storms become hurricanes.

The sixth storm of what experts predict will be an unusually busy Atlantic hurricane season, Fay brought gusty conditions and steady downpours to south Florida. The rain was needed in an area where development over the past decade has outstripped water supplies.

"Most of the damage has really been limited to the heavy rainfall," Florida Emergency Management director Craig Fugate said. "Street flooding, downed power lines, downed trees, that kind of event."

The storm killed more than 50 people in the Caribbean, most of them in Haiti when a crowded bus tried to cross a rain-swollen river and was carried away by the current.

FEW SERIOUS INJURIES

In Florida, one of the few serious injuries occurred when a powerful wind gust picked a kite boarder up like a rag doll and slammed him into the beach and then a nearby building in Fort Lauderdale.

The hurricane center forecast that Fay would most likely track northeastward and briefly re-emerge over the Atlantic before curving back into northeast Florida.

The weather system knocked down trees, signs and awnings in the low-lying island chain of the Florida Keys and also uprooted some trees in the Miami area.

More than 111,400 utility customers in 32 Florida counties lost power due to the storm, the bulk of them customers of the state's main supplier, Florida Power & Light Co..

The storm's path was far from U.S. oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Nevertheless, some energy companies briefly pulled workers from offshore platforms.

Orange juice prices shot up on Monday on fears Fay could hit Florida's main citrus growing areas. But traders said the areas would have to be struck by several much stronger storms, as they were in 2004 and 2005, for fruit trees to be affected.

Across south Florida, schools cancelled Tuesday's classes and Gov. Charlie Crist warned residents to remain vigilant.

The state was hit by a series of hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, including Katrina before it went on to devastate New Orleans and kill 1,500 people on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The United States escaped serious blows in 2006 and 2007, and authorities fear people might have become blase.

(Additional reporting by Scott Disavino in New York, Jim Loney and Jane Sutton in Miami; editing by Michael Christie and Mohammad Zargham)