Hurricane Harbor: Updated 8 PM Tropical Storm Colin. Messy TS Delivers Misery to Floridians in the Form of Flooding, Power Outages and Tornado Warnings. Merging with Front and Moving up into GA and Carolinas ..Coastal Cruiser of Sorts

Good before and after look at Colin.

26,000 people without power in Florida currently.

Charleston having minor flooding...for now minor.

The weather arrived way ahead of schedule in Charleston.

Rain not wind but Charleston doesn't need more flooding.

Some nice color images of Colin

Since it's a Gaelic Celtic name.. let's go for green

Radar shows rain picking up in Gator Land .. Go Gators!

Note the strong squall off coast of Georgia...

..far from the center that has not made landfall yet.

As the sun went down that center did become visible.

A lot of complaints about the poor presentation of Colin.

The post season team can do their analysis.

For now.. it's a named storm.

And to make up for that transporter joke.

Colin's center did show up on satellite imagery.

Even talk it will increase a bit in strength..

..before going extratropical

(inside thought I think we are there shhh)

And wow doesn't this look a bit like the crew at the NHC?

Teasing... good to laugh sometimes.

And by the way to that person.. you are nothing like Mr. Spock!

Rolling eyes.

As for Colin ...

Location: 29.3°N 84.7°W
Moving: NE at 23 mph
Min pressure: 1001 mb
Max sustained: 50 mph

And it's raining in Raleigh.

Nice shot of the center of Colin below.

Naked, but definitely a center... swirl and all

The exposed but very visible center of TS Colin

Note Colin is forecast to possibly strengthen as it moves fast to NE

Already moving at 23 MPH forward speed.

Again as storms meet land and merge with fronts they sometimes intensify a bit.

Keep watching.

Bryan Norcross did a good job tracking the "real center"

He's good at making complicated seem simple.

Ironically the strongest storms shown here are in Naples and Jacksonville.

Far from the "center" of Tropical Storm Colin.

Tornado Warnings in Collier County and Jacksonville.

Note down below it left a trail down to Central America.

Put both sides of this storm together and you see the entire picture.

Colin is not your run of the mill Tropical System.

But it's got a name, weather and advisories.

It actually has winds up to 70 mph in squalls.

It's an ongoing reality show.

But it's REAL not fake.

Even in it's current state.

Even far removed from the weather covering the State of Florida.

I want to say this in retrospect about this morning's discussion from the NHC regarding multiple centers. It was a wise call considering the proximity to land and immediate storm impacts to keep the advisories going and not to pull the plug on this tropical mess. The winds are there, pressures are low and somewhere in there is a center keeping this mess together. Often with Tropical Storms early and late in the season you get storms that are hard to define and affected by shear and other aspects that create lopsided huge systems that look like two hearts pumping at the same time.

I can see the center that the 11 AM discussion spoke of saying there were several swirls. In truth that is true, it's apparent on visible imagery. Whether it's the center or one of the centers is not important. What is important is that the system known as Colin is bringing strong weather to a large area near some of the centers and far away from any center. Politicians are doing the same two step they have done time and time again with systems like this with the same excuse. The area wasn't in the area of the Tropical Storm warning so they didn't cancel school. But, now that the weather is as bad as many forecasters said it would be ...they are canceling school early and asking parents to come pick up their kids. Oh and by the way some routes such as the Skyway Bridge are now closed due to strong winds and weather however some people used that bridge to go into Tampa and now need to find other routes. It may be common that the bridge sometimes gets closed temporarily but this was forecast to be messy and problematic.

The cone is way to the North where the main center being tracked will cross Florida.

There is a center in the GOM far to the East with wispy clouds not weather.

Florida from the Keys to Jacksonville have hoisted warnings from tornado warnings to severe weather.

Heavy rain is moving towards Atlanta as I type this...

The storm, such as it is, is merging with another feature so basically the weather from this storm covers an area from the Yucatan (it's got a long tail) across all of Florida and moving up into Georgia and the Carolinas tomorrow.

People have flooding. People have lost power. It may seem like a nothing storm but to those who lost power and have flooding in their homes it's a real Tropical Storm. Life is a matter of perspective.