Hurricane Erin Is Picking Up Steam

Hurricane Erin began strengthening again Wednesday while creeping toward the mid-Atlantic coast and churning up menacing waves that have closed beaches from the Carolinas to New York City. Forecasters expect the storm to peak over the next 48 hours and say it could re-intensify into a major hurricane by Wednesday night, the AP reports.

• While Erin is unlikely to make landfall along the East Coast before turning farther out to sea, authorities expect its large swells will cut off roads to villages and vacation homes on North Carolina's Outer Banks and whip up life-threatening rip currents from Florida to New England.

• New York City closed its beaches to swimming on Wednesday and Thursday. Some beaches in New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware also will be temporarily off-limits. Off Massachusetts, Nantucket Island could see waves of more than 10 feet later this week. But the biggest threat remained along the Outer Banks.
• Despite the beach closures, some swimmers were continuing to ignore the warnings. Rescuers saved more than a dozen people caught in rip currents Tuesday at Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina—a day after more than 80 people were rescued.
• A combination of fierce winds and huge waves—estimated to be about 20 feet in height—could cause coastal flooding in many beachfront communities, North Carolina officials warned on Wednesday. "Regardless of the track of the center of the storm, dangerous conditions can be felt far from the eye, especially with a system as large as Erin," said Will Ray, the state's emergency management director. After years of erosion, some beachfront homes are not expected to survive the storm, CNN reports.

• Water from the Atlantic was already washing onto the main route through the Outer Banks on Wednesday, and some sections are likely to be impassable during high tide later in the evening. Authorities warned that time was running out to leave, but most residents decided to stay despite evacuations ordered on Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands.
• Erin has become an unusually large and deceptively worrisome storm , with its tropical storm winds covering 500 miles from edge to edge—roughly the distance from New York City to Pittsburgh. Erin remained a strong Category 2 hurricane on Wednesday with maximum sustained winds around 110 mph, the National Hurricane Center said. It was about 365 miles south-southeast of North Carolina's Cape Hatteras. The local National Weather Service warns that marine conditions in the area will be "extremely life-threatening," the Washington Post reports.