Strong winds and whipping rains began to lash eastern Florida on Saturday as Hurricane Frances, an enormous storm, crept across the northern Bahamas toward the United States.
Although weaker than it had been, Frances promised to bring torrential rain to Florida's Atlantic coast, where 2.5 million people had been told to evacuate their homes, after delivering a long pounding to the Bahamas.
Storm conditions were forecast to last between 12 and 15 hours. Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown said people should not let their guard down because Frances had weakened, as it could still cause huge damage.
"(It is) a massive storm," Brown told reporters. "Unlike (recent Hurricane) Charley, this storm has an awful lot of moisture with it. This could be a very significant flooding event."
In the Bahamas, the hurricane killed one person, blew off roofs, downed trees and power lines and caused widespread flooding in the 700-island archipelago that is home to 300,000 people.
By 8 a.m. (noon GMT), the slow-moving storm was about 110 miles (180 km) east of West Palm Beach, Florida, and hanging over Freeport on Grand Bahama island, the US National Hurricane Centre said.
It was moving west-northwest at 6 mph (9 kph) on a path that could mean its core would sweep ashore near Vero Beach, just south of Cape Canaveral where NASA's space shuttles are launched, late on Saturday or early on Sunday.
The storm's top sustained winds were 105 mph (170 kph), well down from the devastating 145-mph (235-kph) winds it carried a couple of days ago, but still strong enough to uproot trees, down power lines and wipe out mobile homes.
Hurricane-force winds were expected to spread out 105 miles (170 km) from the centre, but seemed likely to spare some of the most populated areas of Florida's east coast, such as Miami and Fort Lauderdale, from the full brunt of their fury.
Charley, a more powerful but much smaller hurricane, caused $7.4 billion in insured losses and killed more than 20 people last month.
Gasoline ran out in many places and few stores remained open in the ghost towns along the exposed coast. Most airports across the state were closed. Disney World and other central Florida theme parks were also closed on Saturday, and big shopping malls were shut at the start of the three-day Labor Day holiday weekend.
By early Saturday, state emergency management officials reported some 55,000 people were in public shelters, a figure that included some of those left homeless when Hurricane Charley slammed into Florida's south-west coast just three weeks ago.