Hurricane Lee restrengthens to Category 3 as East Coast faces hazardous beach conditions this week

Hurricane Lee has strengthened back into a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph, satellite pictures and data from a hurricane hunter plane indicated Sunday.

The powerful storm, which has fluctuated in intensity throughout its time over the open Atlantic, is expected to become a very dangerous Category 4 by late Sunday or early Monday morning, according to the National Hurricane Center.

"Dangerous surf and rip currents have begun to reach portions of the southeast (United States) East Coast and are forecast to worsen and spread northward along much of the US East Coast during the next couple of days," the National Hurricane Center said in an update Sunday.

Lee is forecast to slow down considerably as it moves well north of Puerto Rico, the British and US Virgin Islands and the northern Leeward Islands, but it will have an impact there and on other Caribbean islands. It remains too early to determine its long-term track for later this week and how significant the impacts could be for northeastern US states, Bermuda and Atlantic Canada.

By midweek, Lee will make a turn to the north, eventually moving between Bermuda and the US East coast late this week.

The East Coast is bracing for the same kind of large swells and rip currents that the Caribbean is facing now.

"Swells generated by Lee are affecting portions of the Lesser Antilles," the National Hurricane Center warned Friday night. The British and US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Bahamas and Bermuda also face swells this weekend that can bring life-threatening surf and rip conditions.