IF YOU LIVE IN NEW ORLEANS...PLEASE LEAVE!

From CNN: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city beginning 8 a.m. Sunday morning but urged residents to consider escaping "the mother of all storms" before then.

New Orleans residents leave Friday via Interstate 10 westbound ahead of Hurricane Gustav.

"You need to be scared," Nagin said. "You need to be concerned and you need to get your butts moving out of New Orleans right now. This is the storm of the century."

The city's west bank is to evacuate at 8 a.m. and the west bank at noon.

Nagin said the city had evacuated roughly 10,000 people on Saturday on buses, traines and planes. Buses from collection points would continue running until midnight and resume at 6 a.m. on Sunday, he said.

"This storm is so powerful and growing more powerful every day," Nagin said of the hurricane, which reached Category 4 with sustained 150 mph winds as it tore through Cuba's western coast. "I'm not sure we've seen anything like this."

Authorities began ordering mandatory evacuations along Louisiana and Mississippi's Gulf Coast earlier Saturday as Gustav roared past Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico.

"This storm could be as bad as it gets," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Saturday afternoon. "We could see flooding even worse than we saw in Hurricane Katrina."

Thousands of people had begun fleeing the coast by the time a hurricane watch was issued Saturday afternoon for southeastern Texas to the Alabama-Florida border as Gustav pursued a projected path toward the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The watch, which means hurricane conditions are possible within 36 hours, was announced the day after many in the region marked the third anniversary of Katrina's landfall.

At 5 p.m. ET, the eye of Gustav was about 130 miles (210 km) east-northeast of Cuba's western tip and moving northwest about 15 mph.

Hurricanes are ranked 1 to 5 in intensity on the Saffir-Simpson scale. A Category 4 has winds of 131 to 155 mph and can cause extreme damage. Watch a report on the hurricane watch »

Hundreds of people lined up for buses and trains to take them out of New Orleans and thousands of other Gulf Coast residents drove inland, clogging major highways.

Jindal said the state planned to begin "contraflow" procedures, opening both sides of interstates to outgoing traffic only, at 4 a.m. Sunday.

More than a dozen parishes in Louisiana have declared states of emergency, and several others called for mandatory evacuations to begin Saturday and Sunday.

In Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish, where mandatory evacuations began 4 p.m. Saturday, authorities called the order "a matter of survival."

Many parishes also were imposing tough dusk-to-dawn curfews, hoping to assure residents that they could evacuate without fear of their vacant homes being looted.

Jindal did not order mandatory evacuations at a state level, but he urged residents to take the evacuations seriously.

"I wouldn't worry about whether the evacuation in your parish begins at 4 p.m. today or 8 a.m. tomorrow," he said. "When it comes to evacuation, do it sooner rather than later."

In New Orleans, Louisiana, anxiety was high Saturday as residents fled, leaving behind a ghost town of boarded-up homes and empty streets.