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Officials across the upper Gulf Coast are closely watching the track of Cristobal, expected to be a tropical storm as it nears the U.S., while still fine-tuning their plans to deal with both severe weather and coronavirus at the same time.

"Sheltering is not going to be an ideal thing this year for anybody but it is going to be a way for people to stay safe," Rupert Lacy, emergency management director for Harrison County, Mississippi, told weather.com Wednesday.

Lacy's area of responsibility includes Biloxi and Gulfport, communities that are no strangers to damage from tropical weather. Like other emergency officials along the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic coasts, Harrison County is working to ensure social distancing and other guidelines are met if storm shelters need to be opened.

Included in the plans are opening more shelters than normal, handing out face masks to evacuees and having a stockpile of hand sanitizer.

"Being a hurricane-prone community, if the storm is endangering the residents, we’re going to do our best to keep them high and dry, keep them protected from the water and, of course, protect them from the wind," Lacy said. "If it’s something catastrophic, we’re going to try and do our best."

(MORE: The Latest Forecast for Cristobal)

While the forecast track and intensity for Cristobal could change in the coming days, Mississippi and Louisiana appear in the path of the storm this weekend. While it isn't likely that the storm will cause massive evacuations, shelters could be needed in some areas, especially those vulnerable to flooding.

Collin Arnold, director of homeland security and emergency preparedness for New Orleans, told weather.com Thursday that the city doesn't typically order evacuations for a storm the size of Cristobal's predicted strength, and that people would be encouraged to shelter in place.

“People have been staying at home. They’re safest at home with COVID19. This weekend if we feel the impacts of this storm, which is going to be most likely a heavy rain event, you are still safest at home and sheltering in place," Arnold said.

“COVID notwithstanding, our biggest threat in this city is hurricanes. We recognize that year round. COVID19 has presented some pretty significant challenges toward our hurricane strategy, our response strategy.”

About 10% of New Orleans' 390,000 residents rely on the city to transport them to evacuation shelters, Arnold said. This year's revised hurricane plans include social distancing, the wearing of masks and temperature checks at locations where evacuees are picked up by buses.

The city has also identified additional shelters to help keep density down

Louisiana Gov. Jon Bel Edwards said in a news briefing Wednesday afternoon that the state worked out an agreement prior to hurricane season to use hotels instead of "mega shelters" in some cases,

Plans for using hotels to house evacuees are complicated, Mike Steele, a spokesman for the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, told weather.com Thursday. Steele said that one potential challenge is ensuring there are enough hotel rooms both for people who evacuate themselves and those that rely on local governments.

"There’s a little concern because the vast majority actually evacuate on their own and use a lot of the hotel space," Steele said.

Arnold emphasized that using hotels for shelters would be an "absolute last resort option."

(MORE: Final Hurricane Emergency Plans Still in Limbo For Many Counties Most at Risk Amid Pandemic)

The state has made accommodations for social distancing if large shelters need to open at any time in the coming months.

"First of all, we do have plans that involve mega shelters as an option and we have prepositioned some tents within the shelters so that people can have an area in the shelter that is sort of self-contained, if necessary," Edwards said, noting that those types of shelters are not expected to be needed for Cristobal.

He also noted that under normal circumstances, neighboring states would open their shelters to Louisiana residents. But that may not be the case this year.

"We are still working through that because in a public health emergency you can imagine, just like we don’t want to do congregant sheltering here, they don’t want to do congregant sheltering of our people in their state," Edwards said.

Clay Reeves, director of emergency preparedness for Baton Rouge, said capacity in the community's primary shelter could drop from 716 people to about 318 due to social distancing guidelines.

"Normally, if we house people for a short period of time, we give them 10 square feet per person, and, if it's overnight, 20 square feet per person," Reeves told the Advocate. "In a COVID-19 environment, the Department of Children and Family Services recommends 45 square feet per person."

Louisiana is moving forward Friday with the next phase of its reopening plan, but some coronavirus-related restrictions remain.

"The mitigation measures that we have in place remain critically important and should be taken into account as you make your hurricane preparations," Edwards said.

"Now is the time to prepare. Put yourself and your family in the best possible position to ride out the first 72 hours of this storm and make sure that you get a game plan."

(MORE: In the Era of Coronavirus and Social Distancing, Should You Go to a Hurricane Shelter?)

Back in Mississippi, Lacy said it hadn't been decided yet if shelters would open in Harrison County. Doing so would serve as a preview of what could happen in a bigger storm later in the season, he added.

"If we had flash flooding or if we had river flooding, then of course I do worry about that," Lacy said. "And with a tropical system coming in, yes, I’m sure I would have some people who would possibly need sheltering. It would be a test run and I hate using that word, but it would kind of help us possibly gauge what we’re looking at."

He said the economic fallout from coronavirus might make things difficult for residents who can't afford to travel inland, where they might have family and friends to stay with.

"With the COVID-19 pandemic that we’ve been experiencing, some of those people have been out of work, so do they have the funds or can they afford to travel north or east or west?" Lacy said.

Regardless of what happens with Cristobal, communities in hurricane zones are all bracing for what the summer and fall might bring. Several forecasts have predicted a more active hurricane season than usual, and it's unprecedented to already have had three named storms this early in the season.

"For whoever has the first storm or two, we’re all probably going to be watching and seeing how those particular emergency managers do and what the response will be because we don’t have those answers," Lacy said. "We think we know but we just don’t know."

For the latest coronavirus information in your county and a full list of important resources to help you make the smartest decisions regarding the disease, check out our dedicated COVID-19 page.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.