TD 3 Forms in SE Gulf; Tropical Storm Warnings on Florida Gulf Coast
By: Bob Henson , 5:14 PM GMT on June 05, 2016


A large swath of coastline from the Florida panhandle to the state’s west coast was placed under a tropical storm warning on Sunday morning by the National Hurricane Center (NHC) with the commencement of advisories for newly declared Tropical Depression 3, expected to become Tropical Storm Colin by Sunday night. The tropical storm warning extends from Indian Pass (southeast of Panama City) to Englewood (between Tampa and Fort Myers). As of 11 AM EDT Sunday, the center of circulation for TD 3 was located just off the north coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, or about 550 miles southwest of Tampa, FL. Virtually all of the shower and thunderstorm activity (convection) associated with TD 3 was positioned more than 100 miles east of this center, over the very warm waters of the Yucatan Channel, the extreme southeast Gulf of Mexico, and the northwest Caribbean (see Figure 1 below). The convection was broadening and intensifying on Sunday, suggesting that TD 3 is approaching tropical storm strength.