South Texas communities welcomed thousands of hurricane refugees Wednesday as residents of coastal cities fled to escape Hurricane Ivan.

Traffic was bumper-to-bumper in some places and lines at some gas stations were long as residents began the slow race away from the coast and the threat of the approaching hurricane.

One Louisiana woman who intended to drive to Waco told News Ten this morning that she abandoned her plan because of traffic tie-ups.

Gina Klatt of Mobile, Ala., whose husband is stationed with the Coast Guard in the Arctic Circle, was headed to Dallas with her 18-month-old son. She told a reporter she’s afraid she won’t have a home to return to.

Another woman from Mobile told a reporter she spent the night in her car alongside the road taking a break from the slow-moving traffic.

The American Red Cross has opened shelters at Baytown's Eastside
Baptist Church and the Mont Belvieu Senior Citizens Center.

Several shelters are operating in Beaumont, where the hotels and
motels are reported full.

The Harvest Club, which is used as an exhibit center during the
South Texas State Fair in Beaumont, opened as an evacuee shelter.

The Salvation Army office in Beaumont also was accepting
refugees.

Meanwhile, most of the 55-thousand hotel rooms in Houston are
filled with regular convention attendees, plus people who fled the storm.

Forecasters are expecting Hurricane Ivan to continue on a northward track for the next 24 hours, which would bring the center of the storm to the Gulf coast early tomorrow.

It's currently about 230 miles to the south of Mobile, Alabama,
and moving to the north at about 13 miles an hour.

The storm's top sustained winds are near 135 miles an hour.

Forecasters say it'll reach the shore as a "major hurricane"
at least a Category Three and they say hurricane-force winds could
extend up to 100 miles inland.

The forecasters are warning of storm surge flooding as much as
16 feet above normal, along with dangerous waves.

They also say isolated tornadoes could start to appear this
afternoon in southern Alabama, southwestern Georgia and the Florida
Panhandle.

Officials in New Orleans, which actually sits below sea level, are working on a "last resort" emergency shelter for the thousands of people and tourists who can't leave the city.

The storm could produce as much as 10 to 15 inches of rainfall.

New Orleans hasn’t taken a direct hit from a hurricane since 1965 when Hurricane Betsy left some neighborhoods under as much as seven feet of water.

Forecasters were also monitoring Tropical Storm Jeanne Wednesday and said it could develop into a hurricane later in the day.

A hurricane warning for Jeanne was in effect for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.