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UPDATE: Tropical storms Bonnie, Charley near Florida

Both storms may impact South Carolina in coming days

By The Associated Press

MIAMI -- A pair of tropical storms moved closer to Florida on Wednesday, with Tropical Storm Charley prompting emergency officials to order visitors to evacuate part of the Florida Keys and a weaker Tropical Storm Bonnie creeping toward the Panhandle.

Bonnie was forecast to hit the state early Thursday, at least 12 hours earlier than Charley. But the stronger storm was a bigger concern because it was expected to become a hurricane later Thursday.

National Weather Service tracking charts forecast the path of both storms to bring them up the East Coast and through South Carolina, Bonnie sometime late Thursday or early Friday and Charley on Saturday. The primary impact is expected to be large amounts of rainfall.

Gov. Jeb Bush on Wednesday declared a state of emergency for all of Florida, said more areas may need to be evacuated and activated the Florida National Guard.

Charley prompted the National Hurricane Center in Miami to issue a hurricane watch for the middle and lower Keys from Dry Tortugas to Craig Key, an area that includes Key West. The watch means hurricane conditions are possible within 36 hours. A tropical storm becomes a hurricane when maximum sustained winds reach 74 mph.

Monroe County emergency officials were recommending that visitors evacuate the part of the 100-mile-long island chain under the watch, which can take several hours because there's only one road to the mainland. Residents were not being told to leave.

At 11 a.m. Wednesday, Charley had top sustained winds of 70 mph and was strengthening. Its center was located about 110 miles south-southeast of Jamaica and moving west-northwest at 18 mph. It was expected to hit Jamaica later Wednesday and could hit western Cuba early Thursday, forecaster Daniel Brown said. Jamaica was under a tropical storm warning and hurricane watch, while western Cuba was under a hurricane watch.

Charley was predicted to hit or pass close to the lower Keys later Thursday and then hit the southwestern Florida mainland early Friday as a Category 1 hurricane, the weakest on a scale of five, with winds of about 85 mph, Brown said.

Still at hurricane force, it was then predicted to pass over central Florida, but could go anywhere from Miami to the Panhandle, forecasters said. Three to six inches of rain are expected, with locally higher amounts possible, Brown said.

"It's not going to slow down a lot," Brown said, meaning Charley won't hover long over the state to drop even more rain.

Lisa Kaminski, a manager at a Days Inn in Key West, was telling the hotel's approximately 200 guests that they had to leave, as well as warning those with reservations.

"We're telling people that the hurricane will probably be here Friday and it's in their best interest not to come," she said.

The Key West native said she and her employees weren't too worried about Charley, though: "We're staying. This isn't a big one."

Eric O'Keefe, dive master at the Subtropic Dive Center in Key West, said a few tourists have called to cancel scuba trips, but the storms haven't hurt business too much.

"We don't really dive in a hurricane. ... But we're just saying 'Wait and watch the weather," he said.

Florida also has the busiest ports in the world for cruise ship traffic, and the storms were forcing cruise lines to change their routes. Carnival Cruise Lines was reshuffling the ports of call for several ships to avoid the storms, and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. was considering doing the same, officials said.

Meanwhile, most of northwest Florida, from the Alabama border to the Suwanee River, was under a tropical storm warning and a hurricane watch Wednesday and should expect Bonnie's wind and rain on Thursday, Brown said.

At 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Bonnie was centered about 235 miles south-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River and moving north-northeast at around 6 mph. Bonnie was expected to turn northeast and speed up during the day, forecasters said.

The storm had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph and would likely get stronger during the day, forecasters said. Tropical storm force winds extended 70 miles from the center. Bonnie is not expected to become a hurricane, but could dump 4 to 6 inches of rain, Brown said.

Because the Panhandle is already soaked from days of rain from a different system, some low-lying areas may have to be evacuated if there's flooding, said Craig Fugate, the state's emergency management director. That decision would be up to local authorities.

Bonnie and Charley are the second and third named storms of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.

On the Net:

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

Florida Keys Official Tourism Web Site: http://www.fla-keys/.com