Thanks to reader and fellow weather-blogger Carl Schaad, I just stumbled upon a reference to my blog in today’s edition of the St. Petersburg Times:

The first tropical storm of the 2006 hurricane season may be forming in the Caribbean Sea, but a storm of a different sort already has developed on the Internet.

While meteorologists closely watch a low-pressure system near the Yucatan Peninsula, a growing legion of weather bloggers has posted theories about whether this could become the first hurricane to hit the United States this year.

“They’re all very abuzz about this — maybe out of all proportion to what’s going on,’’ said Jack Beven, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami. …

Now, besides the usual TV and radio updates, weather blogs such as www.thestormtrack.com and flhurricane.com are blaring out warnings on the Web.

Some of the blogs are put together by qualified meteorologists, while others, such as irishtrojan.com, are the work of amateurs with no formal training. The irishtrojan.com blog is run by a 24-year-old University of Notre Dame law student and self-professed “weather nerd’’ named Brendan Loy.

On Wednesday, Loy looked through the various official computer models and on his blog asked, “Will there be a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico this weekend?’’

By Friday the answer was: Not yet. The low-pressure system was still poorly organized, although the National Hurricane Center reported that “a tropical depression could form at any time.’’

The answer is still “not yet,” by the way. As of 10:30 PM EDT:

A BROAD AREA OF LOW PRESSURE CENTERED BETWEEN HONDURAS AND WESTERN CUBA HAS CHANGED LITTLE IN ORGANIZATION DURING THE PAST FEW HOURS. HOWEVER…CONDITIONS APPEAR TO BE FAVORABLE FOR THIS SYSTEM TO BECOME A TROPICAL DEPRESSION OR A TROPICAL STORM DURING THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS.

Stay tuned.