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The Atlantic's first tropical storm developed Saturday morning, chugging along toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, although forecasters weren't sure how close it might come to disrupting oil spill recovery efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

Tropical Storm Alex, just before 11 a.m. on Saturday, boasted winds of about 40 mph.

``Barely a tropical storm,'' said Dave Roberts, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in West Miami-Dade.

The storm will likely pass over the Yucatan land mass early Sunday, weakening a bit before emerging in the Bay of Campeche early next week and strengthening again, possibly into a weak Category 1 hurricane, Roberts said.

While the storm's westerly track might spare the oil recovery zone, he said, it was too early to tell with this rare June storm in the Gulf.

The size of the storm was of concern -- tropical storm force winds extend outward about 115 miles, mostly to the north and the east.

Winds in excess of 45 miles per hour days away from the Deepwater Horizon gusher in the Gulf of Mexico spill could force at-sea workers to abandon their oil collection efforts for as long as two weeks, the head of the national response effort said Friday.

That timetable would conservatively unleash another half-million barrels of oil into the sea -- twice the Exxon Valdez spill. Using upper-end federal estimates of the leak, 840,000 barrels would gush out. That's 35 million gallons.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen described the cut-and-run plan in a conference call to reporters at noon Friday as Tropical Storm Alex had yet to be named but was on the horizon.

``Realistically, over an abundance of caution,'' the admiral predicted that Deepwater Horizon's well would remain uncapped for ``14 days'' if the storm headed into the area of the gulf where the ships are collecting oil.

Allen told reporters that planning for a hurricane would require an evacuation of the wrecked oil rig's site once 40-knot winds are predicted to arrive within five days.

That means unplugging the makeshift system called a ``top hat'' that has been collecting a portion of the gushing crude.

Were there a coming hurricane, coastal clean-up efforts would also be abandoned in the Gulf, said Allen, who until recently was the commandant of the Coast Guard.

``I don't think anyone wants a vessel out there trying to skim oil with the weather building beyond gale-force winds,'' he said.

``In general,'' he said, describing robust contingency planning, ``at about 120 hours out of the onset of gale-force winds, we will start to redeploy the equipment from the well site, redeploy other equipment to safe venues, and then come in after the storm to re-establish production or to take part in rescue activities with the Coast Guard.''