Forecasters are confident it will curl north and away from the eastern U.S., but tropical storm and surge watches were issued for much of the Outer Banks.

Hurricane Erin may be spinning hundreds of miles offshore, but its impact is being felt hard along the East Coast.

“When assessing how people in the US lost their lives from the last 10 years due to tropical storms and hurricanes about 12% of them were due to rip currents,” according to Cassandra Mora, meteorolog...