Tropical Storm Irwin Strengthens off Mexico’s Pacific Coast

Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Tropical Storm Irwin, once a hurricane, strengthened slightly as it drifted over Pacific waters west of Mexico on a track that will keep it away from land the rest of the week, the National Hurricane Center said.

Irwin’s top winds rose to 45 miles (72 kilometers) per hour from 40 mph as the system churned 185 miles west-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico, according to a center advisory at 5 p.m. New York time. The storm is moving south at 5 mph.

The NHC also is tracking a system in the Caribbean off the Yucatan Peninsula and Honduras with a 20 percent chance of becoming a larger storm in the next two days. A second area of disturbed weather near Bermuda probably won’t become a storm.

--With assistance from Lananh Nguyen in London and Lynn Doan in San Francisco. Editors: Richard Stubbe, Dan Stets

To contact the reporters on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dan Stets at dstets@bloomberg.net