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Five storms have affected South Carolina during this seemingly endless 2004 hurricane season and it may not be over yet. Still another storm, Hurricane Jeanne, could affect the state by early next week, forecasters warned.

A Thursday morning advisory from the National Hurricane Center showed Jeanne, which was a Category 2 storm with winds of 105 mph spinning east of the Bahamas, was forecast to make landfall in Florida, turn out to sea and then make a second landfall Monday along the South Carolina coast.

However, the Hurricane Center cautioned that errors in a four-day forecast are large, averaging almost 290 miles.

If Jeanne were to hit, it would be the first time in at least 150 years that three named tropical systems have made landfall on the South Carolina coast in the same hurricane season.

Two have already made landfall in Charleston County - Hurricane Charley and Tropical Storm Gaston, while the remnants of Bonnie also tracked into the state after that storm made landfall on the Gulf of Mexico.

Locally, Hurricane Charley did more damage to hotels' bottom line than it did to buildings. Physical damage was $2.5 million in Horry and Georgetown counties, while lodging properties lost an estimated $30.4 million in revenue from canceled trips.

If Jeanne does affect the Grand Strand's coastal areas it likely will start to occur as early as late Sunday or early Monday.

At 11 a.m. EDT, Jeanne was centered about 465 miles east of Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas and moving west at 4 mph. Jeanne could first pass over the northwest and central Bahamas; those areas were under a tropical storm watch.

S.C. and local officials said they never took their eyes off Jeanne and its erratic movements in the Atlantic basin but did not consider it much of a threat to the coastal areas until now. Forecasters said it was too early to say exactly where the storm could hit, but they asked residents to monitor the storm.

"We never stopped watching the storm, but now that it seems it will be heading toward South Carolina, we are monitoring it closely," said John Legare of the state's Emergency Management Division.

"Even though it's still several days out, they need to keep monitoring it right now, keep an eye on it," said Tom Collins, the eastern state coordinator for the state Department of Emergency Management.

Local officials had not held an emergency management briefing nor opened the emergency-operations center.

"We're still watching and waiting and waiting," Horry County spokeswoman Lisa Bourcier said Wednesday.

Officials kept Gov. Mark Sanford's office informed of Jeanne's movements but had not scheduled any conference calls. Legare would not speculate when efforts might be increased to react to the storm and its potential paths.

The storm could bring rip currents, high seas and surf as well as heavy rains, shallow coastal flooding and hurricane-force winds, according to the National Weather Service in Wilmington, N.C.

Storm-driven waves have swamped sections of the island's eroded southern beach, washing away a road and damaging utilities.

"We're in a wait-and-see attitude like everyone else," Middleton said Wednesday.

The Sun News staff writer Tonya Root, The Associated Press and Knight Ridder contributed to this report