WILMINGTON -- Tropical storm warnings are now in effect in 30 North Carolina counties, and an additional 11 counties face tornado watches as Tropical Storm Hanna prepares to make landfall around 2 a.m. Saturday.

Forecasters said there is a slight chance Hanna could still become a small hurricane before making landfall on U.S. shores after it roared past the edge of the Bahamas Thursday.

Hanna is expected to hit anywhere from Charleston, S.C., to the North Carolina-South Carolina border at Sunset Beach and North Myrtle Beach.

A hurricane watch remained in effect for Edisto Beach, S.C., just south of Charleston, all the way up to the Outer Banks of North Carolina near the Virginia border.

Meanwhile, nearly one-third of North Carolina remained under a tropical storm warning Friday afternoon. That means tropical storm conditions are expected within 24 hours.

Gov. Mike Easley declared a state of emergency in the North Carolina Thursday and many coastal towns enacted voluntary evacuations, although many people decided to ride out the fast-moving storm with another major system – Hurricane Ike – looming in the Atlantic.

"This is not just going to be a coastal issue and we need to be aware of that," Gov. Easley said Friday. "This is a very, very large storm, a huge low pressure system, so the winds and the rain are going to be widespread north and south as well as east and west."

The storm will likely wash out the weekend from the Carolinas to Maine, and North Carolina saw the first of that rainfall early Friday. Hanna was expected to dump several inches of rain on in North and South Carolina, as well as central Virginia, Maryland and southeastern Pennsylvania.

Some spots could see up to 10 inches of rain as the storm marches quickly north up the Atlantic seaboard and pushes into New England by early Sunday morning.

In Charleston, Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said there was no reason to flee, but urged residents to stay inside when Hanna blows through with wind gusts that could reach 65 mph.

"Stay home, protect yourself, look out for your neighbors and we will get through this just fine," he said.

Several counties in both North and South Carolina opened shelters, and hotels further inland offered discounts to those fleeing Hanna's path. That included Fayetteville, where Cumberland County opened three shelters – two at local schools and one at a recreation center.

But on the thin barrier islands that make up North Carolina's Outer Banks, vacation home owner Joe DiStefano checked out the forecast early Friday and said Hanna appears to be moving too quickly to cause much damage.

"It's the storms that linger — that keep blowing and blowing and causing a lot of erosion — that do the most damage," said DiStefano, of Deale, Md., taking a break from reading a magazine on the beach in Nags Head. "Unless it stays for a long time, it's not too worrying."

As of 5 p.m. Friday, Hanna had maximum sustained winds near 70 mph and was centered about 240 miles south-southwest of Wilmington. The storm was moving toward the north at 20 mph. Hanna’s sustained wind speed would need to increase to 74 mph for it to become a Category 1 hurricane.

Still, the bigger worry was the ferocious-looking Hurricane Ike, which weakened to a Category 3 storm early Friday as it headed toward the Bahamas and Florida. And with power outages and problems from Hurricane Gustav lingering in Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and relief groups found themselves juggling three storms.

"You've got to make a snap judgment just before the play of where you're going to stay," said FEMA's head of disaster operations, Glenn Cannon. "We don't want to get sucked in by having all of our resources at the wrong place, but we've got to be flexible enough to move."

The normally bustling waterfront in Morehead City was nearly deserted early Friday. Charter captain Bobby Ballou said most of his colleagues decided to haul out before Hanna arrived, but the 60-year veteran of the charter business sat on a bench at his dock and spliced thick lines to tie up his boat.

"I'm not too worried about this one," said 74-year-old Ballou. "That Ike, I don't like him.”

Emergency managers in New England also planned for Hanna, which could hit this weekend with heavy rain and strong winds. In Providence, R.I., workers cleared storm drains and stocked up on sandbags and residents were urged to buy supplies.

"If nothing else it's a good dress rehearsal for Ike if Ike were to come," said Peter Judge, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

Meanwhile, Haiti's government more than doubled Hanna's death toll late Thursday to 137. It had previously been 61. Eighty of the deaths occurred in the flooded region of Gonaives and another 22 people died in areas immediately surrounding the port, according to statements released by the Ministry of the Interior and the Civil Protection Department.

Gonaives has been almost entirely cut off by Hanna's floodwaters and virtual lakes have formed over every road.

The storm also was blamed for two deaths in Puerto Rico.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Hanna's impact

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