Will hurricane affect local weather? There’s a cone of uncertainty.

A step to the East, a shimmy to the West, and on Thursday morning the cone of uncertainty that is Irma next week means ... exactly what for Southern Illinois?

“Right now the forecast we’re going with is it’s not going to impact us,” said meteorologist Sally Johnson, with the National Weather Service in St. Louis.

The National Weather Service’s forecast for the metro-east calls for sunny skies with highs in the upper 70s to low 80s through Thursday, Johnson said.

“We aren’t expecting any impacts,” Johnson said. But she left a little wiggle room for weather watchers wondering what the cone of uncertainty means.

“We could start introducing chances of rain… that far out there’s still a lot of uncertainty,” she said.

This story was originally published September 8, 2017 at 10:24 AM with the headline "Will hurricane affect local weather? There’s a cone of uncertainty.."