Residents on Florida's Gulf coast filled sandbags, schools closed early and graduation ceremonies were postponed as Gov Rick Scott declared a state of emergency with Tropical Storm Colin churning toward the state today, threatening serious flooding.
A large portion of Florida's western and Panhandle coast was already under a tropical storm warning when the National Hurricane Center announced that a swift-moving depression had become a named storm.
The center said it is the earliest that a third named storm has ever formed in the Atlantic basin.
Colin's maximum sustained winds Monday morning had increased to near 50 mph (85 kph) with some slow strengthening possible during the next two days. The storm was centered about 285 miles (455 kilometers) west-southwest of Tampa and moving north-northeast near 16 mph (26 kph).
Early Monday, Ronald P. Milligan, 74, stopped by a park in St. Petersburg where authorities planned to distribute sandbags because the ditch in front of his home had filled during the previous evening's rain.
"If last night was a 'no storm' and the water was almost up to the hump in my yard I'm worried," Milligan said, motioning to about knee level. He's lived in Florida since the late 1970s and hasn't ever prepared for a storm this early. Sandbags also were being distributed in Tampa and nearby cities.
The latest forecast for Colin called for the storm to make landfall near the Big Bend area of Florida in the mid-afternoon, move across the Florida peninsula into Georgia and then move along or just off the South Carolina coast before heading out to sea.
Schools in at least one Florida Gulf Coast county planned to dismiss students early Monday. Pasco County, which had passed out about 20,000 sandbags so far, said schools would be letting out, and it was likely that county government would shut down around noon to get people off the road by 3 PM.
