ORLANDO, Fla. -- Rita continued moving toward Texas Wednesday night on a track to possibly be the strongest hurricane to ever hit Texas, according to Local 6 meteorologist Tom Sorrells.

"This thing is bound for a date with the Texas coast line and where ever it goes, there will be devastation if it remains the monster storm that it is now," Sorrells said. "And there is every reason to believe it will remain this strong or almost this strong."

Hurricane Rita became a top-of-the-scale Category 5 storm Wednesday and was expected to fill up the Gulf of Mexico as it churned toward the Gulf Coast. Maximum sustained winds were near 175 mph late Wednesday.

Forecasters said Rita could easily be one of the most powerful storms ever to plow into the U.S. mainland.

"That eye of the storm is some kind of impressive," Sorrells said.

Sorrells said Rita is expected to remain a Category 5 storm through the night and through the day Thursday before making landfall in Texas Friday or Saturday.

Forecasters expect Rita to come ashore along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi. But if it makes even a slight turn to the right, it could again deal a devastating blow to New Orleans.

"According to the model the Hurricane Center uses, it should weaken back down to a Category 4 storm but then again that is all hit and miss," Sorrells said. "Either way, it is going to be one of the strongest storms to hit in a long time and perhaps the strongest storm to ever hit this part of Texas."

At 5 a.m., the center of Hurricane Rita was located near latitude 24.9 north, longitude 88.0 west or or about 515 miles east-southeast of Galveston and about 615 miles east-southeast of Corpus Christi.

Hurricane force winds extend outward up to 70 miles from the center, and tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 185 miles.

Central Florida

Scattered showers are expected to continue in parts of Central Florida through Thursday.

"If you live in Orlando or Sanford, maybe as far as Ocala, you may see a passing shower," Mowry said.

The weekend forecast looks clear for Orlando and most of Central Florida.

Evacuations Begin

With Rita projected to hit Texas by Saturday, Gov. Rick Perry urged residents along the state's entire coast to begin evacuating. And New Orleans braced for the possibility that the storm could swamp the misery-stricken city all over again.

Galveston, low-lying parts of Corpus Christi and Houston, and mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys and began drawing energy with terrifying efficiency from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Government officials eager to show they had learned their lessons from the sluggish response to Katrina sent in hundreds of buses to evacuate the poor, moved out hospital and nursing home patients, dispatched truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals, and put rescue and medical teams on standby.

An Army general in Texas was told to be ready to assume control of a military task force in Rita's wake.

"We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we got to be ready for the worst," President Bush said in Washington.

In the Galveston-Houston-Corpus Christi area, about 1.3 million people were under orders to get out, in addition to 20,000 or more along with the Louisiana coast. Special attention was given to hospitals and nursing homes, three weeks after scores of sick and elderly patients in the New Orleans area drowned in Katrina's floodwaters or died in the stifling heat while waiting to be rescued.

Helicopter, ambulance and buses were used to evacuate 200 patients from Galveston's only hospital. And at the Edgewater Retirement Community, a six-story building near the city's seawall, 200 elderly residents were not given a choice.

"They either go with a family member or they go with us, but this building is not safe sitting on the seawall with a major hurricane coming," said David Hastings, executive director. "I have had several say, 'I don't want to go,' and I said, 'I'm sorry, you're going.'"

Galveston, a city of 58,000 on a coastal island 8 feet above sea level, was the site of one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history: an unnamed hurricane in 1900 that killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people and practically wiped the city off the map.

The last major hurricane to strike the Houston area was Category-3 Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead.

Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth-busiest season since record-keeping started in 1851.

The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933. Six hurricanes have hit Florida in the last 13 months.

The hurricane season started June 1 and ends Nov. 30.

Watch Tom Sorrells, Larry Mowry and Michele Cimino for more on this story.