Tropical Storm Kirk weakening

Tropical Storm Kirk is weakening as it heads through the eastern Caribbean Sea, with the National Hurricane Center forecasting that it would drop to a tropical depression Friday night and then degenerate into a trough of low pressure today.

As of 5 p.m. Friday, Kirk was maintaining wind speeds of 45 mph, down from 60 mph in the middle of the week. A system must maintain wind speeds of at least 39 mph to be considered a tropical storm.

On the forecast track, the center of Kirk or its remnants will move across the eastern and central Caribbean Sea over the next day or two, the Miami-based hurricane center says. The storm poses no immediate threat to our area.

“Kirk is expected to move generally west northwest ward to northwestward over the next 12 hours or so, but by tomorrow (Saturday) morning, the cyclone will likely have degenerated into a trough of low pressure. Even though Kirk is weakening, heavy rains are expected over St Croix and eastern Puerto Rico during the next day or two while Kirk or its remnants pass to the south of those islands.”

Watchers of the Atlantic tropics might recall that the short-lived first version of Tropical Storm Kirk weakened to a depression last Sunday before fizzling into a blob of clouds and storms by Monday. While Kirk made a comeback as the week went on, forecasters had said that conditions up ahead in its path were not be amenable to the its long-term survival.