British tourists evacuated as 80mph Tropical Storm Fay hits Florida at near hurricane strength

Popular holiday resorts along the Gulf coast were placed on Hurricane watch with winds of up to 80mph expected to batter the region.

The storm, which has already claimed as many as 30 lives as it swept across Haiti and Cuba, is expected to be upgraded to a category one Hurricane when it makes landfall in Florida.

A queue of traffic out of Key West in Fiesta Key. Officials have urged visitors to leave the string of low-lying islands ahead of Tropical Storm Fay

Forecasters say the hurricane could strike anywhere between Fort Myers and Tampa - both popular resorts with tourists from the UK.

Visitors staying in the Florida Keys have already been evacuated after a state of emergency was declared by Florida Governor Charlie Crist.

Tourists have been advised to stay inside their rented homes or hotels. All Florida hotels have shelters, while individual counties arranged for their emergency shelters to open.

The storm's track could take it across central Florida to Orlando, home to the Disney theme parks and the most popular destination in Florida for British  tourists.

Residents in Tampa, where the storm is predicted to make landfall, have been issued with free sandbags to protect their homes.

Satellite image of Tropical Storm Fay as it bears down on Cuba. It is expected to reach hurricane strength as it hits Florida.

Hundreds of homes in Tampa Bay are risk from a storm surge caused by Fay.

On Sunday long queues built up on the two lane road leading from Key West  to Miami as visitors heeded the warnings to leave.

Fay, the sixth named storm of the 2008 Atlantic season, left at least five people dead in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

A Haitian lawmaker said another 30 people may have died in a bus crash blamed on the storm.

Fay is expected to near hurricane strength, which starts at windspeeds of 74 mph, when it reaches the Keys.

Apart from wind damage, most of the islands sit at sea level and could face some limited flooding from Fay's storm surge.

The exact track is not clear but the storm is expected to travel along the western coast of Florida dumping up to ten inches of rain.

Stacy Stewart, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Centre, said: 'We don't want people to focus on the exact track. This is a broad, really diffuse storm. All the Florida Keys and all the Florida peninsula are going to feel the effects of this storm, no matter where the centre makes landfall.

'We don't want people to downplay this.'