CLEARWATER - Despite reports that Hurricane Frances was weakening, Pinellas officials warned of a dangerous storm headed this way and asked people stay off the roads for the duration of the storm.
Gary Vickers, Pinellas County's Emergency Management Director, said the latest report from the National Hurricane Center in Miami has Frances still walloping the East and Central Florida with winds of 90 mph, with even greater gusts.
Tropical storm force winds are expected in Pinellas, with the strongest winds starting around 4 p.m. and lasting well into the night.
"These conditions have continued to worsen," Vickers said, "and we expect that to continue this afternoon."
Already, winds were measured at 60 mph, forcing officials to close the Sunshine Skyway Bridge around 11 a.m.
Travel on other bridges remained "dicey," Vickers said, but the Howard Frankland, Gandy and Courtney Campbell were still open at noon. Vickers said that could change soon, with all three possibly closing later this afternoon.
"There's a very high probability those bridges will close over the next hour," Vickers said at a noon press briefing.
Bridges to the barrier islands also remained open.
Storm surge is still not considered a threat, but Vickers said the National Weather Service has warned of abnormal increases in the tide when the storm passes into the Gulf of Mexico. That could raise the tide by one to three feet.
The county ordered an evacuation of all mobile home parks late Saturday and 2,874 people have entered the 11 shelters that are open. Vickers said people have limited time to evacuate, warning that travel should be ceased after 1 p.m.
Power was out for a while at Kennedy Middle School, one of the county's 11 shelters, for a while and the school was running on two generators, but Progress Energy said power was restored shortly before noon.
Anticipating further outages, the Pinellas County Emergency Operations Center switched to generator power and Vickers said the facility plans to run on generators for the duration of the storm. The county generators can keep power on for three weeks, he said.
Progress Energy reported 14,664 people without power - about 3 percent of its customer base in Pinellas - with those outages spread out throughout the county. Crews are working to restore power as weather permits.
