Social media being what it is, and humans being what they are after a big storm event, Facebook and the Twitterverse are starting to buzz with dire predictions about Major Hurricane Irma, which is a new tropical system way out in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Some of the very long-range forecasts put the storm over the Southeast US in about ten days. While our forecasts of hurricanes have improved dramatically over time (more for tracks than intensity), ten days is still very far out in the future and any tracks you see publicized at this point should be taken very broadly. There’s a great discussion of this in Forbes.com today at https://www.forbes.com/sites/dennismersereau/2017/09/01/its-too-soon-to-know-if-hurricane-irma-will-threaten-the-united-states/#34c826063dc6.
Now, if you have outdoor projects that will take more than a week to do, it’s certainly smart to at least think about what the disruption of a major storm would do (hurricane or otherwise) and take some precautionary steps to protect yourself and your farm and property, but also realize that the final path that Irma or the next storm, also brewing in the Atlantic now, will be only one of the multitude of possibilities being forecast now, and not necessarily one that will bring it to your area.
