Schools are closed, evacuation shelters are opening, and some evacuations being ordered today as Tropical Storm Hanna begins to race toward landfall in the Carolinas late tonight or early Saturday.

The National Hurricane Center says Hanna, which picked up speed early Friday, will have top sustained winds of 70 to 80 mph when it makes landfall, somewhere near Myrtle Beach.

But forecasters stress that Hanna is a sprawling and disorganized system, its tropical storm-force winds spread out 315 miles.

"The wind and rain will be felt long in advance of the storm's center," said Jamie Rhome, of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

And those who aren't concerned about Hanna say they are paying attention to Hurricane Ike, a powerful storm that is forecast to menace the Southeast United States next week, possibly hitting the Carolinas coast at midweek.

"Ike is a very scary storm," said Mike Hughes, spokesman for a North Carolina power company that closely tracks hurricanes as they head through the Atlantic.

Read the full story at CharlotteObserver.com.