Washington - Tropical Storm Fay came ashore in Florida for the third time on Thursday, where the slow moving storm was dumping heavy rain in northern parts of the state near the city of Jacksonville.

The storm first came ashore in Florida on Monday at its southern tip, Key West, and then crossed the south-western portion of the Florida peninsula before again moving offshore ahead of the latest landfall. It earlier left as many as 50 people dead in flooding and landslides in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Fay was moving at just 3 kilometres per hour at 1800 GMT Thursday, with its centre over Flagler Beach, and would slowly cross the northern part of the state possibly reaching the Gulf of Mexico on Friday or Saturday, the National Hurricane Centre in Miami said.

Northern Florida, southern Georgia and southern Alabama could see up to 25 centimetres of rain, forecasters said.

Up to 8,000 homes had been flooded by the rains in St Lucie, CNN reported. Isolated areas had received up to 76 centimetres of rain, the hurricane centre said.