FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ The regenerated Tropical Storm Kirk is one of those sequels nobody really wanted or asked for (see: "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" or "Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo").
The second installment of Kirk, resurrected Wednesday from the first Kirk's remnants, was continuing to trek west toward the Caribbean at a decent clip, although not quite as fast as earlier in the week.
Kirk's top wind speeds had gone up by about 15 mph on Wednesday, from 45 mph in the morning to 60 mph in the afternoon, bringing Kirk closer to hurricane status, according to the National Hurricane Center. The minimum threshold for hurricanes is winds measuring 74 mph.
A tropical storm warning, meaning that tropical storm conditions were likely over the next 36 hours, was in effect for islands along the eastern wall of the Caribbean including Barbados, St. Lucia, Dominica, Martinique and Guadaloupe.
Kirk is about 1,800 miles southeast of South Florida and poses no immediate threat to our area.
Watchers of the Atlantic tropics might recall that the short-lived first version of Tropical Storm Kirk weakened to a depression on Sunday before fizzling into a blob of clouds and storms by Monday.
But regardless of whether or not Kirk intensifies further this time or remains a tropical storm, forecasters say the conditions up ahead in its path will not be amenable to the its long-term survival.
Why? Wind shear. Shear, which refers to varying wind speeds in the atmosphere, is bad for tropical systems because it can weaken or kill them.
"Strong westerly shear is likely to continue to adversely affect Kirk while it moves over the Caribbean, and the system should weaken into a depression within 72 hours or sooner, and become a remnant low later in the forecast period," the National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.
As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, Tropical Storm Kirk was spinning to the west at 18 mph about 300 miles east of Barbados.
On its current track, Kirk's center "will move over the Lesser Antilles within the Tropical Storm Warning area Thursday night," the hurricane center's latest advisory said.
The Lesser Antilles are the islands that comprise the arc-shaped line of islands that form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean.
Meanwhile, an area of low pressure about 100 miles off North Carolina no longer has a chance of becoming a tropical depression, forecasters said.
Finally, Post-Tropical Cyclone Leslie, in the central Atlantic a few hundred miles southwest of Portugal's Azores Islands, has a 90 percent chance of becoming organized again over the next five days.
