The 2017 Farmers Almanac, published in 2016, predicted that a hurricane would form east of Florida at about this time.
The Farmers Almanac, that trusted tome used by generations of farmers since 1818 to decide when to plant, prune and harvest, saw Irma coming a year ago.
The Almanac didn’ t call the biggest storm ever tracked in the Atlantic by her name, and the 2017 edition — published in the fall of 2016 — missed the storm’s date of birth by a few days. It predicted that from Sept. 12 to 15, the Southeastern United States would see thunderstorms, then fair weather, and a tropical cyclone would develop east of Florida.
It notes that the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season is Sept. 10. Current forecasts call for Irma to hit Florida on Sunday, Sept. 10.
In case you want to look ahead, the book, published in Lewiston, Maine, calls for gale-force winds again on the U. S. coast from the Gulf to the mid-Atlantic between Sept. 20 and Sept. 23.
Here’s hoping the forecast for the first storm was dead-on: It calls for Irma to move out to sea.
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