H urricane Erin, now a Category 2 hurricane, has prompted a tropical storm watch for North Carolina's Outer Banks and is expected to bring dangerous waves and rip currents to beaches along the East Coast. While the storm won't make landfall on the East Coast, it has prompted mandatory evacuations for some Outer Banks residents and visitors.

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...