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.

People living on the Hatteras and Ocracoke islands of North Carolina have been asked to evacuate their homes by officials as Hurricane Erin has re-intensified into a Category 2 storm.

“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...