MIAMI, Florida — Hurricane Dorian took aim at the Florida coast early on Thursday, whipped up by warm Atlantic waters as it threatened to become a dangerous category 3 storm.

Dorian had sideswiped the Caribbean without doing major damage but, with the storm strengthening, the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands lay in its path.

In the United States, Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency on Wednesday and asked east coast Floridians load up with at least 7 days worth of supplies, such as food and water.

"All indications are that by this Labor Day weekend, a powerful hurricane will be near or over the Florida peninsula," the National Hurricane Center in Miami said in an advisory.

The US Coast Guard warned that all pleasure boats at the Port of Key West should seek safe harbor before the Labor Day weekend begins.

And ocean-going vessels should make plans to leave the port ahead of the storm, the Coast Guard said in a news release.

A US Air Force base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, home to the largest spaceport in the United States, entered the early stages of hurricane preparations on Wednesday.

Dorian, a category 1 storm, is expected to grow into a category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, with winds greater than 111 mph (178 km/h) by the time it makes landfall, most likely on Florida's eastern coast on Monday and linger over central Florida early Tuesday forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

Early on Thursday, the NHC said Dorian was blowing maximum sustained winds of 85 mph some 150 miles (240 km) north-northwest of San Juan, and about 425 miles (685 km) east-southeast of the southeastern Bahamas.

"On this track, Dorian should move over the Atlantic well east of the southeastern and central Bahamas today and on Friday," forecasters said, "and approach the northwestern Bahamas on Saturday."

It is expected to become a major hurricane by Friday afternoon and continue to gain strength until it makes landfall on Labor Day.

President Donald Trump issued an emergency declaration Wednesday night for the US Virgin Islands, ordering federal assistance with disaster relief for the US territory.

On Tuesday he made a similar declaration for Puerto Rico, and also renewed a feud with island officials over how disaster relief funds from previous hurricanes.

Puerto Rico is still struggling to recover from back-to-back hurricanes in 2017 that killed about 3,000 people soon after the island filed for bankruptcy. On Wednesday it escaped fresh disaster as Hurricane Dorian avoided the territory and headed northwest toward Florida.

Puerto Rican public schools will be closed again on Thursday and public workers have been instructed to stay home.

Earlier in the day Dorian plowed through the US Virgin islands and Culebra, an island belonging to Puerto Rico, data from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) showed.

As Dorian moved northwest, preparations were mounting in the Bahamas, which could be hard hit.

Jeffrey Simmons, the country's acting director of the Department of Meteorology, said severe weather could strike the southeast Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands on Friday.

While landfall on Florida's coast is most likely, at four days out from the US mainland, forecasters said the storm could track north to the Georgia or South Carolina coasts. — Reuters