PANAMA CITY, Fla. _ Hurricane Michael emerged Wednesday as a Category 4 storm with 145-mph winds on track to make landfall as the most powerful hurricane on record to hit Florida's Panhandle.
The storm was moving north-northwest over the southeastern Gulf of Mexico early Wednesday, generating warnings from officials for residents along coastal communities and elsewhere to hunker down in a safe place.
Michael is forecast to lash coastal areas of Florida, Alabama and Georgia with as much as 12 inches of rain. Farther inland, damaging winds, torrential rain and life-threatening flash floods are forecast for parts of Georgia and Alabama.
"This is the worst storm that our Florida Panhandle has seen in a century," Florida Gov. Rick Scott said at a news conference at the state's emergency operations center in Tallahassee. "Hurricane Michael is upon us and now is the time to seek refuge."
Before dawn, residents along a long curve of the Florida Gulf Coast scrambled to shelters as the National Hurricane Center called Michael "potentially catastrophic" and warned of a "life-threatening" storm surge, powerful winds and torrential rain.
More than 2 million Florida residents were under mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders as a hurricane warning was in effect from the Alabama state line to the Suwannee River mouth in Florida. A storm surge warning was also in effect from Florida's Okaloosa-Walton county line to the Anclote River near Tampa.
The National Hurricane Center expects Michael to move inland over the Florida Panhandle or the state's Big Bend area Wednesday and then weaken as it moves northeast across the southeastern United States on Wednesday night and Thursday.
One of the biggest concerns on the coast is storm surge. If peak surges occur at the time of high tide, a 130-mile stretch of the coast from Tyndall Air Force Base to the Aucilla River could see storm surges as high as 14 feet.
As the rain bore down in Panama City, a steady stream of evacuees filled Rutherford High School, hauling yapping dogs, crying babies, blankets, mattress pads, oxygen tanks, folding chairs, crates of water and grocery bags stuffed with Wonder Bread and Doritos.
Patricia Barnes, a 76-year-old retired bookkeeper, was a little short of breath and her blood pressure was up when she arrived at the shelter. She had stayed up all night in her chair with the TV news on, comforting herself with Psalm 23: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."
Initially, she and her husband had planned to ride Michael out at their home in Lynn Haven, a small coastal town seven miles north _ until they heard it had strengthened to a Category 4.
"It's better to be safe," she said.
Huddling in an outdoor breezeway while her sister put her Jack Russell terrier, Skooter, in a hallway reserved for pets, Barnes approached a volunteer: "You got a room for me?"
Shaking his head, the volunteer told her he didn't have rooms but had open hallways. He scooped up her blankets and pillows and ushered her to a narrow hallway lined with grey metal lockers.
Evacuees seemed to occupy every inch of the sprawling brick high school, spreading blankets and mattresses in classrooms, hallways, and the cafeteria. Some rested their heads on wooden desks or curled up in sleeping bags on linoleum floors, while others passed the time playing cards, reading paperbacks or monitoring the hurricane on their cellphones.
In her rush to find a cab in the middle of the night to get her to the shelter, Tamika Rowe, 27, a criminology student who had moved to the area a few months ago from Jamaica, had grabbed important documents like her birth certificate and passport. She had not thought to bring blankets or pillows.
"It's not going to be easy sleeping," she said ruefully after she had picked a narrow space on a linoleum floor in a hallway.
More than 50 shelters were open across Florida. In Bay County, emergency officials urged residents to stay off the roads and warned those who still remained in their homes to stay inside and seek shelter in an interior room with few windows.
According to meteorologists, no Category 4 or 5 hurricane has made landfall in the Florida Panhandle since record-keeping began in 1851.
The last major hurricane to strike this part of Florida was Dennis, which made landfall in 2005 as a Category 3 storm on Santa Rosa Island, about 40 miles east of Pensacola. Since 1950, only two other two major hurricanes have made landfall in the region: Eloise in 1975 and Opal in 1995.
In 2016, Hurricane Hermine made landfall as a Category 1 storm, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents _ including more than 80 percent of residents of the state capital, Tallahassee _ without electricity.
Michael could cause as many as 1.8 million customers to lose power across the Florida Panhandle and southern Georgia, according to a computer model run by the Guikema Research Group at the University of Michigan.
