A severe storm with hurricane-force wind gusts has caused intense flooding in parts of South Florida.

More than a foot (30.5 cm) of rain was unleashed on parts of South Florida, flooding homes and streets, downing power lines and trees and leaving tens of thousands of homes and business without power.

The storm dropped almost 14 inches of rain from Key Largo to Fort Lauderdale while wind gusts topped out at 86 mph (136 kph), the US National Service said.

More than 86,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity early on Thursday afternoon across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us, as the storm moved north.

The number of outages topped out at more than 100,000 late on 15 November. 

The system was expected to bring two to four inches of precipitation to Central Florida, before moving north to the Carolinas in the evening and over the weekend

A flood watch remained in effect for Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties on Thursday.

The storms were driven by a low pressure system and warm waters in the Gulf colliding with cooler air and water on the state’s Atlantic coast.