MIAMI - Hurricane Dorian roared Sunday towards the Bahamas as the island chain braced for a devastating direct hit, before the monster storm churns up the US coast from Florida towards the Carolinas.

Barreling in from the Atlantic Ocean, the core of the extremely dangerous Category 4 storm is set to be "near or over" parts of the northwestern Bahamas on Sunday, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest bulletin at 0300 GMT.

Further ahead the NHC said Dorian would "move closer to the Florida east coast late Monday through Tuesday" but exactly where -- and how hard -- it will strike the US coast looked uncertain after the storm shifted course, apparently sparing Florida the worst.

In Grand Bahama, businesses were boarded up and thousands have evacuated Dorian's predicted path with forecasts of devastating winds, life-threatening surf conditions, and storm surges of up to 15 to 20 feet.

Yasmin Rigby, a resident of the island's main city Freeport, told AFP "people are moving out of the east and west ends, fearing the worst."

Grocery stores' shelves were "just about cleared," Rigby said, and most homes and businesses had been shuttered since Friday.

She said memories of past hurricanes -- including 2005's historic storm Wilma -- were still fresh. "It took weeks for water, food and electricity to be back to normal."

The storm's leisurely pace of eight miles per hour means as much as 25 inches of rain could land in the northwestern Bahamas.

That, coupled with the storm surge predictions, poses a fearful prospect for many of the islands, some barely feet above sea level.

Still, Rigby was among the Grand Bahamians who said they intend to ride the storm out.

"Where I am, it's not that bad. I will be filling tubs of drinking water tonight to wait it out," she said.

Currently located about 125 miles east of the Bahamas' Great Abaco Island, Dorian will keep moving slowly westward for the next day or two but is forecast to turn northward.

But the NHC has not ruled out the storm making landfall in Florida.

"Uncertainty remains high as any small shifts in the track could substantially change the potential impacts for locations along the Southeast US coast," the National Weather Center Eastern Region wrote on Twitter. -AFP