HATTERAS, N.C. - 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.

Tens of thousands had been evacuated off the most vulnerable of North Carolina 's Outer Banks as a storm surge of up to 4 feet was likely. Meanwhile, beaches remained off limits to swimming up and down the East Coast as dangerous waves and potentially deadly rip currents angrily pounded the shorelines.

Hurricane Erin was still a Category 2 storm with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph on Thursday morning.

While the center of Erin and its peak winds were some 200 miles east-southeast of Cape Hatteras

See Full Page