Thousands evacuate as winds, rain gain strength

ST. PETERSBURG, Florida - Thousands of Florida residents have been evacuated homes as Subtropical Storm Alberto picked up strength on Sunday as it headed north through the Gulf of Mexico, with forecasters saying it could bring life-threatening inundation to southern coastal states.

The storm was expected to make landfall along the Florida Panhandle on Monday, the US National Hurricane Center said.

Alberto, the first named Atlantic storm of 2018, which spun up days before the formal June 1 start of the hurricane season, was packing maximum sustained winds near 105 km/h and was expected to drop as much as 30 centimeters of rain, slamming an area from Mississippi to western Georgia, the Miami-based hurricane center said.

After that, it will bring powerful winds and heavy rains as it moves into the Tennessee Valley on Tuesday and Wednesday, the hurricane center said. The storm comes during the Memorial Day weekend and was expected to scramble transportation on Monday as many people return from holiday travel.

Isolated tornadoes were possible across the central and northern Florida Peninsula on Sunday night, according to the hurricane center, while Alberto was also forecast to bring storm swells of about 60-120 cm to low-lying areas that were "likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions".

There were a number of deadly hurricanes in the United States and Caribbean last year that walloped places including Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, massive power outages and devastation to hundreds of thousands of structures.

Franklin County, in the Florida Panhandle, has issued a mandatory evacuation for its barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico affecting some 4,200 housing units, while Taylor County, to the east, has a voluntary evacuation order in place for its coastal areas.