A grim warning for some Texans today: They'll face "certain death" from approaching Hurricane Ike if they don't evacuate.

Ike is a Category 2 storm but could become a "major" Category 3 hurricane by the time it reaches the upper Texas coast by midnight, according to the National Weather Service. Its surge has already reached the coast and is threatening the Galveston Island sea wall, AccuWeather reports.

Ike's effect could extend as far as a 200-mile (322-kilometer) radius from its center. In addition to south Texas, a hurricane warning is in effect in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Nearly 1 million people are evacuating the southeast Texas Gulf coast, with Hurricane Ike forecast to make landfall by late tomorrow or early Saturday.

The storm, which blew a deadly path through the Caribbean over the weekend, could be at Category 3 strength by the time it reaches Texas, AccuWeather forecasts. There are tropical storm watches and warnings from the Mississippi-Alabama border to New Orleans and south Texas, the Web site says.

As of 4 p.m. CDT, Ike was about 510 miles (820 kilometers) east-southeast of Corpus Christi and 400 miles (45 kilometers) east-southeast of Galveston, according to the National Weather Service.

Floridians may have escaped the brunt of Hurricane Ike, but the storm is making a bee-line for the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall in Texas by late Friday or early Saturday, forecasters say.

There's still a tropical storm warning from west of Key West to the Dry Tortugas, but storm surges in the Keys and along the Cuban coast should subside today, according to the National Weather Service.

Ike, which killed 80 people in Haiti and Cuba when it barreled through those islands over the weekend, is a Category 2 hurricane with winds near 100 miles per hour (155 kilometers per hour), according to the weather service.  It will become a "major hurricane" in the next 24 hours, the agency said -- possibly strengthening to a Category 3 storm.

It looks like Florida has escaped Ike's wrath. The hurricane watch in the Keys is over, according to the National Weather Service.

The former Category 4 hurricane has weakened to a Category 1 tempest and is now "hugging" Cuba, the agency says, just hours after it declared the storm was "battering" the island. Still, 1.8 million Cubans have been moved from the coast and 9,000 tourists evacuated, Agence France-Press reports, and the death toll in Haiti has climbed to 61 following the hurricane. Ike is now about 45 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Cienfuegos and 215 miles (340 kilometers) southeast of Havana.

Meanwhile, the Caribbean tourist destination Grand Turk is cleaning up after Ike downed power lines and uprooted trees, cars and houses there over the weekend, the Associated Press reports. The newswire says that Carnival Corp. terminal there sustained an estimated $5 million to $10 million in damage.

Tropical storm Hanna is fixing to drench the eastern U.S. this weekend, and with an even bigger tempest, Ike, in her wake, this month is shaping up as the stormy September predicted by atmospheric scientists.

Hanna will be a Category 1 hurricane when she hits Georgia around 8 tonight, according to AccuWeather. If the storm's forecasted route holds, the hurricane will reach the Carolinas by tomorrow morning and the Mid-Atlantic region and New England by Sunday.

Ike, following close behind, is expected to pack an even stronger punch than Hanna. Already a Category 3 hurricane in the Atlantic, Ike is expected to blow into Florida by Wednesday morning; at that point, AccuWeather says, it may have lost some of its gusto and become a Category 2 tempest.