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Tuesday afternoon, Category 2 Hurricane Rita passed just south of Key West, bringing with it tornados, high winds, and heavy rain.

Just before 5 p.m., the tropical storm warning was dropped for all of South Florida except the Keys.

"Fortunately, it wasn't a major hurricane that went right through the Keys. It hasn't been a worst-case scenario by any means," said Michelle Mainelli, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center.

Rita's winds were sustained at 100 mph, and the pressure is dropping, indicating that the storm is still strengthening.

Once it enters the Gulf, Hurricane Rita is expected to grow into a major Category 3 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph. The 5 p.m. intermediate advisory shows Rita continuing to strengthen to a Category 4 storm before it makes landfall somewhere along the Texas coast. Hurricane-ravaged Louisiana is also a possibility for landfall as well as northern Mexico, according to the hurricane center.

State officials said Key West and the other Keys escaped Hurricane Rita's worse case scenario.

Rita's eye passed through the narrow Florida Straits between Key West and Cuba, but it stayed far enough south of Key West that it did very little serious damage.

Florida Emergency Management Director Craig Fugate says while the Keys felt the affects of Rita, they were be spared from the main circulation of the storm.

The storm spawned several small tornados all over South Florida, but as of 5 p.m., there were no reports of serious damage or injuries.

Early in the afternoon, President George W. Bush declared a federal emergency in Broward, Collier, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

The order authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency to mobilize its assets and provides federal money for the storm-related costs borne by local governments.

Florida Keys Electric Co-op said about 2,100 customers were without power. As of 1 p.m., Florida Power & Light reported 18,000 customers in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties were without power.