Hurricane Ike grew stronger as it barreled across the warm, energizing waters of the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday toward the Texas coast after crashing through Cuba's tobacco country and toppling aging Havana buildings.
Forecasters said the Category 1 storm at 4pm eastern time (now a Category 2 at 5:30pm eastern time) could become a major Category 3 hurricane before slamming into Texas or northern Mexico on Saturday.
Texas officials have started to evacuate the first of millions of residents who could be in the storm's path.
Ike has bloomed to a Category 2 storm and was likely to grow even stronger before its predicted strike on the Texas coast early Saturday.
Officials in Matagorda County, about halfway between Houston and Corpus Christi, began a mandatory evacuation for residents in its coastal portions.
County Judge Nate McDonald said his region expected to be the epicenter of the storm.
If more Texas officials order a mandatory exodus, it would be the first large-scale evacuation in South Texas history.
State and county officials let people decide for themselves whether to leave a hurricane area until just before Hurricane Rita struck the Gulf Coast in 2005.
Now county officials can order people out of harm's way.
Texas emergency officials were taking no chances with the lives of its medically fragile citizens. Residents with special needs in the Corpus Christi area were set to start leaving by bus for San Antonio, and the state opened a northbound shoulder lane on Interstate 37 to accommodate the heavier traffic created by people who wished to leave.
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