Tropical Storm Alex, the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, formed Sunday morning in the Gulf of Mexico on a track to come ashore in southern Florida with heavy rains and gusty wind. National Hurricane Center forecasters said in a 5 a.m. advisory that Alex had sustained winds of 50 mph and was located 270 miles northeast of Fort Pierce, Florida.
More than 10 inches of rain could fall on parts of the state, the center predicts, but massive wind speeds or storm surge is not expected. Alex is a new version of the storm that was called Hurricane Agatha when it slammed into Mexico’s Pacific Coast earlier this week, killing at least 11 people and leaving 20 missing.
It got a new name once the storm crossed Mexico into the Atlantic basin.
