Colin Now a Tropical Storm

Tropical storm Colin, approaching the southeastern Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic, was upgraded from a tropical depression, the National Hurricane Center said today.

The system with maximum sustained winds of 40 miles an hour is about 945 miles east of the Lesser Antilles islands moving west-northwest at 23 mph, the center said on its website.

Colin is the third named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season. Hurricane Alex broke up after making landfall in northern Mexico just over a month ago.

The system is on a likely path that will take it northeast of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, curving north and east of the Bahamas and the U.S. East coast between Bermuda later this week and early this weekend.