Context

• Recently Tropical Storm Cristobal unloaded flooding rainfall and made landfall in southern Mexico.
• The disturbance first developed as a depression over the Bay of Campeche in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico 
• It became the earliest-ever third named tropical storm to form in any Atlantic hurricane season in recorded history.
• The previous storm to hold that record was Tropical Storm Colin and Tropical Storm Chantal.

Favorable conditions for Cristobal

• Sea surface temperature is generally very high in southwestern Gulf of Mexico,which is to allow the system to strengthen.
• Wind shear — the increase in wind speed with height in the atmosphere, or a sharp change in wind direction — is forecast to be rather low as the storm emerges over open water and begins its northward trek.

Facts to Remember

• The Bay of Campeche, or Campeche Sound, is a bight in the southern area of the Gulf of Mexico. 
• Tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic are called hurricanes, tropical storms, or tropical depressions.
• The Gulf of Mexico is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent.
• It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba.