Colin Weakens to Tropical Storm West of Bermuda

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Tropical Storm Colin weakened to a tropical depression in the Atlantic Ocean Sunday as it passed west of Bermuda, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, adding the system could dissipate later in the day.

Colin became the third named storm of the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season last week, but had already downgraded once before to a tropical depression on its faltering trajectory out in the Atlantic, staying away from the U.S. East Coast.

The Miami-based NHC said the depression now had maximum sustained winds near 35 miles per hour as it passed about 45 miles west of the Atlantic island of Bermuda, a British overseas territory that is a center for the global insurance industry.

Bermuda residents reported some rain, but no really severe weather.

“Colin could dissipate as a tropical cyclone later today,” the NHC said on Sunday, adding the system would move away from Bermuda later Sunday.

Colin had posed no threat to the the Gulf of Mexico, where U.S. oil and natural gas operations are concentrated and where BP is working to permanently seal a ruptured oil well that caused the world’s worst offshore spill.

Separately, the NHC reported that another low pressure area, located out in the Atlantic about 1,150 miles east-northeast of the Leeward Islands, had a 70 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression in the next few days.

(Reporting by Samantha Strangeways, Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Sandra Maler)