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.

The low pressure system could become a tropical depression today and bring rainy weather to the Tampa Bay area by Sunday.

Hurricane season started June 1. Anyone familiar with what Hurricane Katrina did to Louisiana and Mississippi last year, or what damage was done by the four hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004, knows to keep an eye on weather conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.

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.