Hurricane Erin is bringing life-threatening rip currents along the east coast from Florida to Massachusetts and a destructive storm surge to North Carolina's Outer Banks. At least 75 rip-current rescues were carried out along North Carolina's southern coast on Monday as the Category 3 hurricane begins to follow the coastline, at a distance, north from the Caribbean. It's not expected to make landfall but should move between Bermuda and the US East Coast by mid-week, per NPR. A large section of North Carolina's coast is under a tropical storm watch with winds of 39mph to 73mph possible within 48 hours.
The majority of the Outer Banks is under local states of emergency, with waves of 20 feet or more expected this week as tides are at their highest levels of the month, while the Hatteras and Ocracoke islands are under mandatory evacuation orders. Serious coastal flooding is possible. The National Weather Service warned parts of Highway 12, the main highway along the Outer Banks, "could be impassible for several days."
Erin's outer bands have already brought heavy rain and/or flooding and power outages to the Turks and Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. From Friday to Saturday, Erin went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane, marking "one of the fastest rapid intensification bursts on record in the Atlantic," per CNN. Now at Category 3, its hurricane-force winds extended up to 80 miles early Tuesday and its tropical-storm-force winds extended up to 230 miles, the outlet notes. In its wake comes a tropical wave with a 60% chance of developing into a depression or storm over the next week.