MIAMI (AP) – Emergency officials across the southeast United States were closely watching Irene on Tuesday as the first hurricane to seriously threaten the country in three years churned over energizing tropical waters. The storm has already cut a destructive path through the Caribbean.  Find your local weather with The Weather Channel zip-code lookup:  By Erika Santelices, AFP/Getty Images  A boy stands on a boat after it was taken out of the sea on a Santo Domingo beach. The Dominican Republic is waiting for the arrival of Hurricane Irene in the country's northern coast.  By Erika Santelices, AFP/Getty Images  A boy stands on a boat after it was taken out of the sea on a Santo Domingo beach. The Dominican Republic is waiting for the arrival of Hurricane Irene in the country's northern coast.  Forecasters say the hurricane could grow to a monstrous Category 4 storm with winds of more than 131 mph before it's predicted to come ashore this weekend on the U.S. mainland. The National Hurricane Center in Miami expected Irene to reach Category 3 strength on Tuesday, said spokesman Dennis Feltgen.  Irene was forecast to pass over or near the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas by Tuesday night and be near the central Bahamas early Wednesday.  In the U.K. territory of the Turks and Caicos, a steady stream of customers bought plywood and nails at hardware stores, while others readied storm shutters and emergency kits at home.  "I can tell you I don't want this storm to come. It looks like it could get bad, so I've definitely got to get my boats out of the water," said Dedrick Handfield at the North Caicos hardware store where he works.  Officials could begin issuing watches for parts of the U.S. mainland later in the day. Because the storm is so large, Florida could begin feeling some effects from the storm late Wednesday.  Current government forecast models have the storm's outer bands sweeping Florida late this week before its center takes aim at the Carolinas this weekend, though forecasters caution that predictions made days in advance can be off by hundreds of miles.  The last hurricane to make landfall in the USA was Ike, which pounded Texas in 2008.  For now, the first Atlantic hurricane of the season had maximum sustained winds early Tuesday around 100 mph and was centered about 55 miles northeast of Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. The hurricane was moving west-northwest near 10 mph.  After several extremely active years, Florida has not been struck by a hurricane since Wilma raked across the state's south in October 2005. That storm was responsible for at least five deaths in the state and came two months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.  Irene slashed directly across Puerto Rico, tearing up trees and knocking out power to more than a million people. It then headed out to sea, north of the Dominican Republic, where the powerful storm's outer bands were buffeting the north coast with dangerous sea surge and downpours. President Obama declared an emergency for Puerto Rico, making it eligible for federal help.  Many of the center's computer models had the storm veering northward away from Florida's east coast toward Georgia and the Carolinas. A hurricane center forecast map said the storm's center could come ashore in one of the states on Saturday or Sunday, but forecasters said much was still unclear.  "In terms of where it's going to go, there is still a pretty high level of uncertainty," said Wallace Hogsett, a National Hurricane Center meteorologist. "It's a very difficult forecast in terms of when it's going to turn northward."  Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  , visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor  . For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to  . Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to  We've updated the Conversation Guidelines. Changes include a brief review of the moderation process and an explanation on how to use the "Report Abuse" button.
Picking up steam, Irene, the first hurricane of 2011, looks headed for major storm status and for Florida and the Carolinas.