By JAMIE STENGLE and MARIANA MARTÍNEZ BARBA (Associated Press)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Tropical Storm Alberto formed on Wednesday in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, the first named storm of what is forecast to be a busy hurricane season.

Alberto, which is bringing strong winds, heavy rainfall and some flooding along the coasts of Texas and Mexico, is expected to make landfall in northern Mexico on Thursday.

“The heavy rainfall and the water, as usual, is the biggest story in tropical storms,” said Michael Brennan, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Hurricane Center.

Alberto was located 185 miles (about 300 kilometers) east of Tampico, Mexico and 295 miles (about 480 kilometers) south-southeast of Brownsville, Texas. It had top sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. A tropical storm is defined by sustained winds of between 39 and 73 mph (62 and 117 kph), and above that the system becomes a hurricane.

Brennan said that winds could get up to 45 mph (72 kph) to 50 mph (80 kph) before the storm makes landfall.

As much as 5 inches (13 centimeters) to 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain was expected in some areas along the Texas coast, with even higher isolated totals possible, Brennan said. He said some higher locations in Mexico could see as much as 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain, which could result in mudslides and flash flooding, especially in the states of Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Nuevo Leon.

At the Hotel Miramar Inn in Tampico, Mexico, near where Alberto was expected to come ashore, front desk attendant Diana Flores said the wind was gusty, but still not strong, and the rain hadn’t started yet. “There are people in the restaurant and on the beach,” Flores said early Wednesday.

Outer bands of rain lashed parts of Tamaulipas state in the northeast corner of Mexico overnight.

The storm was moving west at 9 mph (15 kph). Tropical storm warnings were in effect from the Texas coast at San Luis Pass southward to the mouth of the Rio Grande and from the northeastern coast of Mexico south of the mouth of the Rio Grande to Tecolutla.

“Rapid weakening is expected once the center moves inland, and Alberto is likely to dissipate over Mexico” on Thursday, the center said.

The U.S. National Weather Service said the main hazard for southern coastal Texas is flooding from excess rain. On Wednesday, the NWS said, there is “a high probability” of flash flooding in southern coastal Texas. Tornadoes or waterspouts are possible.

NOAA predicts the hurricane season that began June 1 and runs through Nov. 30 is likely to be well above average, with between 17 and 25 named storms. The forecast calls for as many as 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes.

An average Atlantic hurricane season produces 14 named storms, seven of them hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

Brennan said that the first named system in the Atlantic on average comes on June 20, so Alberto is “about right on schedule.”

A no-name storm earlier in June dumped more than 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain on parts of South Florida, stranding numerous motorists on flooded streets and pushing water into some homes in low-lying areas.

Brennan said there will be dangerous rip currents from the storm and drivers should watch out for road closures and turn around if they see water covering roadways.

“People underestimate the power of water and they sometimes don’t always take rainfall and the threats that come with it seriously, especially if you are driving in an area and you see water covering the road, you don’t want to drive into it,” Brennan said. “You don’t know how deep the water is. The road may be washed out. it doesn’t take but just a few inches of water that are moving to move your car.”

___ Stengle contributed to this report from Dallas.

DULUTH — Many roads across Minnesota’s Arrowhead region were flooded and washed out Tuesday night into Wednesday morning after waves of thunderstorms dropped more than 7 inches of rain in some areas.

Parts of the Iron Range across to the North Shore and across Lake Superior to Wisconsin’s Bayfield Peninsula appeared to be the hardest hit areas, with flooding across many roads and some roads entirely closed, according to the Minnesota Department Transportation website.

Minnesota Highway 1 west of Tower; state Highway 73 north of Chisholm; state Highway 135 near Eveleth, U.S. Highway 53 near Cook; state Highway 61 near Schroeder and near Tofte all had flooded areas. Other roads were reported covered by water with washouts in some areas.

The Minnesota Department of Transportation suggested using alternate routes for many of the roads, noting water should recede off most roads by mid-morning Wednesday, but some may still be damaged by the flooding.

Social media photos show a large section of North Arm Road near Burntside Lake near Ely entirely washed out.

RELATED: Boy injured during Tuesday’s storm evacuated from the BWCA

The National Weather Service in Duluth has posted a flood warning until 4 p.m. Wednesday for lasting impacts from the storm, including St. Louis, Lake, Cook, Itasca, Cass and parts of Koochiching, Crow Wing and Carlton counties in Minnesota and Ashland, Bayfield and Douglas counties in Wisconsin. Streams and low-lying areas in all those counties could continue to rise throughout the day before falling again.

Meanwhile, Biwabik city officials on Wednesday said major washouts had cut utility services to the Giants Ridge Recreation Area and other nearby developments. They said it was unclear when utilities would be restored.

While electricity went out during the storm in some areas, Minnesota Power reported no major outages Wednesday morning while Lake County Power reported 17 scattered outages reporting about 150 customers.

The National Weather Service in Duluth reported just over 2 inches of rain, mostly between 6 p.m. and 1 a.m., but radar reports indicated anywhere from 1.5 to 4 inches of rain fell in just a few hours late Tuesday over a large area of the Northland on top of already saturated ground. A flash flood watch and warnings were posted for most of the region.

While the storm system has moved out of the region, more rain is expected in some areas Thursday night into Saturday, with an additional 0.5 to 3 inches of rain expected.

In the metro, Wednesday is the first day since Friday that we are not expecting any periods of rain, the Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service reported on X. However, an additional one to three inches of rain is possible for most of the Twin Cities through this weekend.

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By BRIAN MELLEY (Associated Press)

LONDON (AP) — Two climate protesters who sprayed orange paint on the ancient Stonehenge monument in southern England were arrested Wednesday after two bystanders appeared to intervene and stop them.

The latest act by Just Stop Oil was quickly condemned by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as a “disgraceful act of vandalism.” Labour leader Keir Starmer, his main opponent in the election next month, called the group “pathetic” and said the damage was “outrageous.”

The incident came just a day before thousands are expected to gather at the roughtly 4,500-year-old stone circle to celebrate the summer solstice — the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

English Heritage, which manages the site, said it was “extremely upsetting” and said curators were investigating the damage. Just Stop Oil said the paint was made of cornstarch and would dissolve in the rain.

Video released by the group showed a man it identified as Rajan Naidu, 73, unleash a fog of orange from a fire extinguisher-style paint sprayer at one of the vertical stones.

As voices can be heard yelling “stop,” a person wearing a ballcap and raincoat ran up and grabbed Naidu’s arm and tried to pull him away from the monument. A man in a blue shirt joined in and wrestled the paint sprayer away.

The second protester, identified as Niamh Lynch, 21, managed to spray three stones before the first bystander in the hat stopped her.

Wiltshire Police said the pair were arrested on suspicion of damaging one of the world’s most famous prehistoric monuments and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Stonehenge was built on the flat lands of Salisbury Plain in stages starting 5,000 years ago, with the unique stone circle erected in the late Neolithic period about 2,500 B.C.

Just Stop Oil is one of many environmental groups around Europe that have received attention — and blowback — for disrupting sporting events, splashing paint and food on famous works of art and interrupting traffic to draw attention to global warming.

The group said it acted in response to the Labour Party’s recent election manifesto. Labour has said that if it wins the election on July 4, it would not issue further licenses for oil and gas exploration. Just Stop Oil backs the moratorium but said it is not enough.

In a statement, the group said Labour, which is leading in polls and widely expected by pundits and politicians to lead the next government, needs to go further and sign a treaty to phase out fossil fuels by 2030.

“Continuing to burn coal, oil and gas will result in the death of millions,” the group said in a statement.

By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP Science Writer)

LISLE, Illinois (AP) — With their bulging red eyes and their alien-like mating sound, periodical cicadas can seem scary and weird enough. But some of them really are sex-crazed zombies on speed, hijacked by a super-sized fungus.

West Virginia University mycology professor Matt Kasson, his 9-year-old son Oliver, and graduate student Angie Macias are tracking the nasty fungus, called Massospora cicadina. It is the only one on Earth that makes amphetamine — the drug called speed — in a critter when it takes over. And yes, the fungus takes control over the cicada, makes them hypersexual, looking to spread the parasite as a sexually transmitted disease.

“They’re zombies, completely at the mercy of the fungus,” said University of Connecticut cicada researcher John Cooley.

This particular fungus has the largest known genome of any fungus. It has about 1.5 billion base pairs, about 30 times longer than many of the more common fungi we know, Kasson said. And when these periodical cicadas live underground for 17 years (or 13 years in the U.S. South), the spores generally stay down there with them.

“This was a mycological oddity for a long time,” Kasson said. “It’s got the biggest genome. It produces wild compounds. It keeps the host active — all these quirks to it.”

Kasson decided to ask people from around the country to send in infected cicadas this year. And despite an injured leg, Kasson, his son and Macias travelled from West Virginia to the Morton Arboretum outside Chicago, where others have reported the fungus that takes over a cicada’s nether parts, dumping the genitalia and replacing it with a white, gummy yet flaky plug that’s pretty noticeable. The spores then fall out like salt from a shaker.

Infected cicadas are supposed to be hard to find.

Ten seconds after she hops off the golf cart, Macias is in the trees, looking. She emerges victorious, hand in the air with a cicada, yelling “I got one.”

“That was just lucky,” Oliver whines.

“Luck, huh? Let’s see you get one,” Macias replies.

Ten seconds later at a neighboring bush, Oliver finds another. And just a bit after that a photographer finds a third.

Kasson and his small team collected 36 infected cicadas in his brief Chicago area jaunt with people sending him another 200 or so from all over. He’s still waiting for an RNA analysis of the fungus.

Some cicada experts have estimated maybe one in 1,000 of the periodical cicadas are infected with this fungus, but it’s not much more than a guess. Mount St. Joseph University’s Gene Kritsky, a biologist who wrote the book on this year’s unique dual emergence, said it might be skewed because the healthy cicadas stay higher up in the trees.

This year “the fungus is about how it always is,” Cooley said in an email. “It’s not super common.”

There’s debate among scientists if the fungus infects more cicadas deep in the soil coming out of the ground after 13 or 17 years or if it infects the newly hatched nymphs on the way underground for more than a decade.

This fungus isn’t the type of parasite that kills its host, but instead it needs to keep it alive, Kasson said. Then the infected cicadas attempt to mate with others, spreading the spores to its mate/victim. The males even pretend in their hypersexualized state to be females to entice and infect other males, he said.

The cousin to this fungus which infects annual cicadas out west also makes a psychoactive compound in the cicadas but it is more akin to psychedelics like magic mushrooms, Kasson said. So sometimes people, even experts, mix up the amphetamine that the infected 17- and 13-year cicadas produce with the more trippy compounds of the annual bugs, he said.

Either way, don’t try it at home. Even though cicadas themselves are edible, not so much the infected ones.

In the interest of science, Kasson tried one during this emergence, making sure they were from the inside of a female so more antiseptic.

“Man, it was so bitter,” Kasson said, explaining that he immediately rinsed his mouth out. “It tasted like something you would consider poisonous.”

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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears

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