I hope everyone has evacuated...or least in a safe area. This thing is nasty !!!

MOBILE, Alabama (CNN) -- The eye of a "very, very dangerous" Hurricane Dennis aimed for the Alabama-Florida coast Sunday, and was expected to hit within two hours, forecasters said.

"This is going to be a destructive hurricane," said Ed Rappaport of the National Hurricane Center, which has designated Dennis as a Category 4 storm.

Category 4 hurricanes, according to the Saffir-Simpson scale of strength, have winds between 131 and 155 mph and storm surges between 13 and 18 feet. They cause extensive damage to lower floors of shoreline houses and can destroy mobile homes. (Saffir-Simpson scale)

NHC Director Max Mayfield said Dennis is unusually strong for a hurricane this early in the season.

"This is a very, very dangerous hurricane," Mayfield said. "No matter where this hurricane makes landfall, it's going to have a big, big impact over a very large area."

Dangerous storm surges will cover barrier islands and push into many bays from Alabama to Florida, Mayfield said.

Dennis is stronger than Hurricane Ivan -- a Category 3 storm which pounded the Gulf Coast after it came ashore last September near Gulf Shores, Alabama.

Dennis, which is blamed for up to 32 deaths in Haiti and Cuba, is expected to make landfall Sunday about 2 p.m. ET between Pensacola, Florida, and Mobile, Alabama, .

At 12 p.m. ET Sunday, Dennis was centered 65 miles south-southeast of Pensacola, Florida. The hurricane is moving north-northwest at near 18 mph. Its maximum sustained winds were at 140 mph. The storm was expected to keep turning to the north-northwest as it approached shore.

Some 10 million Americans are potentially in Dennis' path, federal officials said.

A hurricane warning is in effect from Florida's Ochlockonee River west to the mouth of the Pearl River at the Mississippi-Louisiana border.

Rappaport said Dennis differs from Ivan.

"It's different in two ways," Rappaport said. "One, it's smaller than Ivan, but two, it is stronger. There'll be much more destruction from the wind and the storm surge right in near the center of the hurricane, but not as much damage on the outside."

Ivan was blamed for at least 56 deaths in the United States and more than 60 in Jamaica and Grenada, and it left billions of dollars in damage.

A tropical storm warning for the lower Florida Keys, which remained in effect until Sunday morning, was canceled.

The hurricane center predicts nearly a foot of rain is possible in some parts of the Gulf Coast where the hurricane makes landfall.

The hurricane center said Dennis would be the earliest Category 4 hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Audrey struck the Louisiana and Texas coasts in June 1957, The Associated Press reported. The center has no record of a Category 4 storm ever hitting Florida's Panhandle or Alabama.

In Mobile, Alabama, Mayor Mike Dow said most residents had evacuated his city, many due to lessons learned from Hurricane Ivan.

"You're here for a decade or two and the storms miss and you probably don't feel that sense of anxiety," Dow said. "But since Ivan, everyone feels that it's real."

At least half a million people had already left the Alabama coastal area, officials said. Interstate 65 north to Montgomery was temporarily turned into a four-lane highway heading north out of Mobile, but later returned to two-way traffic.

As for what comes next, Dow said, "We're as prepared as we can be. We're prepared for the aftermath."

In Florida, Matthew Lopez, director of Emergency Management in Pensacola's Escambia County said, "I think we're about the most prepared division of emergency management in the state of Florida right now."

"We issued the evacuation order at 6 on Friday," Lopez said, " 'evacuation' to people after Ivan means, 'Get out of Dodge.' "

Ivan also threatens a stretch of Interstate 10, which runs from Jacksonville across the Panhandle and further west. The Florida Highway Patrol closed the Escambia Bay Bridge in Pensacola when winds topped 35 mph. Repairs to the bridge from damage caused by Ivan are not yet complete.

In Mississippi, a curfew for Harrison County was ordered for noon Sunday for an area that includes Biloxi, D'Iberville, Gulfport, Long Beach and Pass Christian, emergency management officials said.

The county ordered mandatory evacuations Saturday for most of the county and for "mobile homes and any structure that cannot withstand winds of 80 miles per hour." Authorities also "strongly" recommended evacuation for the rest of the county, it said in a news release.

Haiti and Cuba
In Haiti, the aid agency Concern Worldwide said it had confirmed at least five people had been killed in the storm, but said it believed the accuracy of local reports of 22 dead.

The 10 dead reported in Cuba were located in the eastern part of the island, authorities said.

Many of the 1.4 million evacuees in Cuba began to return home Saturday afternoon, despite a lack of electricity in most areas. Many had sought shelter in schools, hospitals, government buildings and relatives' homes.

Power had not yet been re-established in Havana as of Saturday morning. Emergency teams there began clearing streets of downed trees, branches and lightposts.

The hurricane center said 3 to 6 more inches of rain was possible across central Cuba and "could produce life-threatening flash floods and mudslides."

CNN's Lucia Newman in Havana and Randi Kaye, Chad Myers and Dan Lothian contributed to this report.

Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

speaking of this, has anyone heard anything from anaranae? She lives in Tampa. I'm wondering if she was evacuated.

I don't believe Tampa was evacuated. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

I have relatives in Clearwater and they weren't evacuated, so I'm pretty sure Tampa was not as well.

Ana said Tampa wasnt evacutaed over in the Hurricane thread in GD.

Tampa is fine, Orlando is Fine. Tallahassee and Pensecola, not so fine. It kind of feels good to get missed just once.

I think that used to be the roof of a mobile home.





Bridge? Fuck!





Navarre Beach, FL