CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  — Hurricane Matthew scraped Florida’s Atlantic coast early Friday, toppling trees onto homes and knocking out power to a half-million people but sparing some of the most heavily populated stretches of shoreline the catastrophic blow many had feared.

Authorities warned that the danger was far from over, with hundreds of miles of coastline in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina still under threat of torrential rain and dangerous storm surge as the hurricane pushed north.

“Remember, it could be the worst of it is yet to come,” Gov. Rick Scott said in the morning.

Matthew was downgraded to a Category 3 hurricane overnight, and its storm center hung just offshore as it moved up the Florida coastline, sparing communities its full 120 mph winds. Still, it got close enough to knock down trees and power lines, and a 107 mph gust was recorded at Cape Canaveral.

As the storm closed in, an estimated 2 million people in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina were warned to move inland to escape the fury of the most powerful hurricane to menace the U.S. Atlantic coast in more than a decade.

Matthew left more than 280 people dead in its wake across the Caribbean.

As it moved on to Florida, it largely skirted the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach areas of over 7 million people and hugged closer to the coast farther north, menacing such communities as Vero Beach, Daytona Beach, Cape Canaveral and Jacksonville.