On Monday, June 6, Governor Rick Scott placed Florida into a state of emergency as the Sunshine State braced for impact with Tropical Storm Colin.
However, Colin, which is the third named tropical storm this year, was merciful to Madison County and aside from some puddles in roads and downed trees and limbs, the county escaped unscathed.
“We had very minimal damage,” said Madison County Emergency Management Director Alan Whigham.
County Coordinator Allen Cherry’s findings supported Whigham's statement, saying that aside from some trees and limbs that had been blown onto the roadways, there was nothing significant about Colin’s damage to Madison County. The biggest impact that the storm had on the county was the rainfall that thoroughly doused Florida.
“We always prepare for the worst,” said Whigham. Despite all the monitoring that focuses on tropical storms and hurricanes, both storm types can be hard to predict and Whigham believes in planning for the worst-case scenarios even if the storm is, as Colin was, harmless. “Hopefully we are prepared [when a devastating storm comes] and can properly exercise our plans,” said Whigham.
According to forecasts, Colin was formed off the coast of Merida, South America, and traveled in a northeast direction across the Gulf of Mexico. The storm made landfall somewhere near the Taylor and Dixie counties and then continued to sweep in a northeastern pull, crossing over the Florida peninsula and traveling up into a small portion of Georgia. Colin entered the Atlantic Ocean after crossing the coastline just below Brunswick, Ga.
Colin was the third named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which only started on June 1. The storm, in fact, was the earliest that a third-named storm has ever formed, according to the National Hurricane Center. Much of the storm’s fury, it appears, was directed at the central part of the state.
Maximum sustained winds for the storm were measured at 50 mph, with a gust of 60 mph reported in some places.