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Tropical Storm Rita gaining muscle
 Tropical Storm Rita churns off the Bahamas in this satellite infrared image, taken Sunday at 11:15 p.m. ET. RELATED
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YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- Tropical Storm Rita gained strength off the Bahamas late Sunday, triggering hurricane warnings across the Bahamas, Cuba and southern Florida and prompting evacuations in the lower Florida Keys. Forecasters upgraded earlier watches to warnings late Sunday night, putting all of the Florida Keys and Florida Bay from Ocean Reef to Dry Tortugas under that advisory. A hurricane warning means that hurricane conditions are possible within the area within 36 hours. An Air Force Reserve plane clocked top winds of 50 mph, and the storm was expected to strengthen in the next 24 hours, forecasters said. At 11 p.m. ET, Rita was located about 295 miles east-southeast of the Bahamian capital Nassau, moving northwest at about 10 mph, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center reported. At this speed and course, Rita will move over the southeast and central Bahamas Sunday night and Monday. It is the 17th named storm of this year's Atlantic hurricane season. With water temperatures in the Florida Straits in the high 80s, it has plenty of fuel. "Rita could become a Category 1 hurricane by late Monday," the center reported. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush declared a state of emergency Sunday, activating National Guard troops, authorizing the use of public buildings as shelters and invoking state laws against price-gouging. In Key West, Mayor Jimmy Weekley said tourists were ordered to leave after noon Sunday. "We had 15,000 bikers down here this weekend because there was a poker run, and we've noticed that a lot of the bikers and a lot of the non-residents, visitors are, in fact, beginning to leave," he said. "But there are still some here." The keys' main north-south artery -- U.S. 1 -- remained open to southbound traffic, which consisted primarily of residents returning from a weekend away in order to secure their property, said Irene Toner, the director of emergency management for Monroe County. Toner called the emergency evacuation of non-residents "standard procedure" during hurricanes, but authorities typically order a general evacuation for residents only for Category 3 storms or higher. "At this point, we will be looking to shelter within the county for the general population," she said of Monroe's 84,000 residents. Cuban authorities posted a hurricane watch for five provinces, including the capital of Havana; tropical storm watches were posted in three other provinces. In addition, a tropical storm warning was posted for southeastern Florida from Deerfield Beach to Florida City, continuing westward to East Cape Sable. 
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