New Tropical Storm Brewing

Tropical Storm Emily picked up speed Tuesday and was expected to gain strength as it following a course straight for the Caribbean.

Hurricane watches were posted for Barbados, Grenada, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, meaning hurricane-force wind could be felt there late Wednesday or early Thursday, the National Hurricane Center said. A tropical storm watch was issued for Tobago.

The storm is forecast to be near Puerto Rico by Friday and could approach the U.S. mainland early next week.

At 2 p.m. EDT, Emily was centered 530 miles east-southeast of Barbados and was moving west at about 20 mph, up from 13 mph on Monday. It had maximum sustained wind of about 50 mph and was expected to strengthen while gradually turning toward the west-northwest.

Hurricanes have sustained wind of at least 74 mph.

Emily grew into a tropical storm late Monday, the earliest date on record that five named storms had developed, the hurricane center said.

Meanwhile, it's another day of assessing damage and cleaning up the debris left behind by the fourth named storm, Hurricane Dennis. Thousands of residents ventured out to survey the damage, and most of them, reports CBS News Correspondent Trish Regan, were relieved.

The heaviest damage was in the Florida communities of Gulf Breeze, Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach, which were all slammed by Ivan.

Jason Wilburn of Navarro Beach didn't know what to expect when he ventured back to his seaside home.

"A little nervous," he said as he went home. And then: "That's my house and I'm so glad it's still here."

Alabama Power says only 37,000 of its customers are still without power, down from a peak of nearly 240,000.

In the northwestern Florida panhandle town of Century, Marion Cooper's general store was being powered by a generator. The entire town, which was hard hit by the storm, is without electricity, reports CBS News Correspondent Cami McCormick; nearly every home suffered some sort of damage. Still, Cooper says the town was lucky.

"Oh, yeah, we're alive!" he laughed.

Remnants of Hurricane Dennis could bring more than rainfall to the Midwest's parched fields: The storm clouds also could carry spores of a potentially devastating soybean fungus.

When Dennis made landfall along the Gulf Coast Sunday, its winds swept an area of southwestern Alabama where fields are infected with soybean rust, said Purdue University plant pathologist Greg Shaner. The storm then moved inland toward the Tennessee and Ohio river valleys.

Shaner said farmers and agricultural scientists nationwide will be looking for any signs over the next few weeks that the fungus has spread. The rust appears as pustules on the leaves of soybean plants. Heat and high humidity could fuel its development.

Fungicides can control soybean rust, but only if they are applied immediately after it is detected. "Farmers should be out scouting their fields for this fungus," said Shaner.

As Dennis sloshed inland and became a tropical depression, it dumped anywhere from 3 to 10 inches of rain over Alabama, Florida, Mississippi and Georgia, before stalling over the Ohio River valley, where up to 10 inches of rain was expected.

Some of the worst came as Dennis marched up through the heart of Georgia, dumping nearly 10 inches on Austell and West Atlanta, according to the National Weather Service. Hundreds were forced to evacuate in some areas.

"I never dreamed in my lifetime this would happen to me," said Mary Anne Lunsford, whose basement and two cars were totally submerged in Mableton. "I've seen it on TV a million times, but I never thought it would be me, never."

Meanwhile, residents along the Gulf Coast returned to their homes Monday to discover missing roofs and walls and belongings strewn about.

Susan Brooks and Suzette Hester commiserated after they reached the remnants of their homes in Navarre Beach. Brooks lost most of the south wall and about half of the roof from her two-story home. Hester lost most of her roof and much of the wood she had loaded into the house to finish repairing from Ivan.

"It's laugh or cry or lose your mind and get institutionalized somewhere," said Hester, a psychiatric nurse. "And my ward is full."

Just down the road, Caryn and Mike Martino stood at the base of their 13-foot high deck — all that remains of their two story home. They had just finished replacing a roof damaged by Ivan, but had not yet moved in. The couple will wait a while before showing pictures of the wreckage to their two young children.

"We'll tell them daddy will make it bigger this round. Bigger and better and stronger," said Caryn Martino, who clutched a composition book with "Dennis" written on the cover. She has a similar book for Ivan filled with insurance claim numbers, government phone listings and other storm-related information.

"I've already got my FEMA number," she said, flipping to a page in the book. "I know the drill."

Dennis was responsible for only a handful of deaths in the United States, although it caused at least 26 deaths in the Caribbean. The storm also caused an estimated $1 billion to $2.5 billion in insured damage in the United States, according to a projection by AIR Worldwide Corp., an insurance risk modeling company.