An estimated 9.46 million people living in coastal counties along the Gulf of Mexico – an area stretching more than 50,000 square miles from Louisiana to the Florida Keys – are bracing for the arrival of Hurricane Dennis, the U.S. Census Bureau said today.

     The most recent Census Bureau population estimates show that the 67 coastal counties (or parishes in Louisiana) across the four states in the path of the storm have an overall population density of 188.8 people per square mile, more than double the national density of 83.0 people per square mile. This area had a 6.7 percent population growth rate from 2000 to 2004, and is more than 3.5 times more populous than it was in 1950, when it had a population of only 2.7 million.

     About 53 percent of the nation’s total population lives in coastal areas, which account for only 17 percent of the total U.S. land area. The total population of Alabama’s coastal counties’ in 2004 was 727,090, or about 16 percent of the state’s entire population. Mississippi’s coastal counties’ population was 607,635, or 21 percent of the state population. Louisiana’s coastal parishes’ total population was 3,555,628, or about 79 percent the state's population. Gulf coast counties in Florida contained 6.8 million residents, or about 39 percent of the state’s total population.

     Based on the National Hurricane Center’s latest storm advisory issued at 2:00 p.m. EDT, the strengthening Category 4 hurricane is projected to make landfall somewhere along the northern Gulf Coast early Monday between Pensacola, Fla., and Mobile, Ala. According to recently released city population estimates, Pensacola had a population of 54,734, and Mobile, 192,759. Current socio-economic data for both the Pensacola and Mobile metro areas are available from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey at <http://www.census.gov/acs>.

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Note: The above calculations are based on projections of the storm’s path from the National Hurricane Center, a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service, and Census Bureau population estimates as of July 1, 2004. These data do not present a full picture of the seasonal population increases of coastal or other tourist areas.