Hurricane Erin brings swells to Florida. It's ideal for surfing but dangerous for beachgoers who see blue skies, but don't realize the dangers.

Hurricane Erin is over 500 miles away from South Florida as of Wednesday afternoon, but the extreme size of the storm is still impacting the wind direction locally, and spreading wildfire smoke across the area.

Hurricane Erin underwent rapid intensification to become a Category 5 storm in just hours. It has since weakened to a Category 4 status.

While the category 4 storm is not expected to make landfall on the U.S. east coast, it will have an impact nonetheless. Dangerous high surf and rip currents are expected from Florida to New England throughout the week.

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 North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

Erin’s surf and storm surge could cause erosion along sections of the Florida and East Coast and shapes up as potentially worse for North Carolina’s barrier islands, which are under mandatory evacuation orders ahead of the four feet of storm surge and 20-foot offshore waves Erin is expected to bring.

The U.S. Air Force 403rd Wing released footage showing one of its planes entering the eye of Hurricane Erin. By early Tuesday, Erin had lost some strength from previous days and had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph),

Hurricane Erin is forecast to “substantially grow in size” while moving closer to Bermuda Tuesday with maximum sustained winds of 115 miles per hour (mph). The Miami-based National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said that the category three hurricane was about 675 miles south west of Bermuda and that a Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the Turks and Caicos Islands,