Hurricane Erin has battered North Carolina’s Outer Banks with strong winds and waves that flooded part of the main highway and surged under beachfront homes.

Hurricane Erin has triggered a state of emergency in North Carolina, where residents and visitors along the Outer Banks are under evacuation orders.

According to a 5 a.m. ET advisory from the National Hurricane Center on Aug. 20, Erin is located about 455 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, with maximum sustained winds near 100 mph with higher gusts.

A powerful and sprawling Hurricane Erin continued lashing hundreds of miles of coastline along the Eastern Seaboard with its outer bands Thursday morning, proving a storm of such size doesn't need to make landfall to bring widespread impacts.

The Atlantic hurricane season is in its peak period of activity, and a small area of low pressure is the latest disturbance to crowd the tropics. See the forecast.

Hurricane Erin is tracking closer to the East Coast, and meteorologists still maintain that parts of Massachusetts will feel the effects of the storm. The National Weather Service branch in Norton, MA is predicting that the storm will pass "well southeast ...

Users were impressed by the perspective captured in the viral post, with one describing it as "beautiful and terrifying."

Hurricane Erin is still churning north and on track to pass by the Jersey Shore and Delaware beaches hundreds of miles off the coast. While the heart of the storm will likely stay well offshore (fortunately),