First it was Irma, then Florence, then Dorian.

Three years, three storms, the same time of the year: early September.

It’s the peak of hurricane season in the Atlantic basin, to the surprise of nobody. It hasn’t been just the past three years: all the way back to the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, followed by Donna in 1960, Gloria in 1985, Hugo in 1989, Fran in 1996, Floyd in 1999, Isabel in 2003 and Irene in 2011 — just to name a few memorable ones — it seems like September is not only the most likely time for hurricanes to form and grow monstrously strong but also the most likely time for Virginia to be affected by them.

Now that Dorian has finally moved on after two weeks of wandering about the Atlantic, causing devastation in the Caribbean and the Bahamas, and then threatening the U.S. East Coast — not to mention the fact that maritime Canadian provinces, which rarely see tropical storms, may still feel Dorian’s wrath — it’s time to turn our attention to two more tropical disturbances that are moving west across the Atlantic.

Yes, hurricane season is definitely in full swing.

But, as after every storm that is projected to affect us and then doesn’t deliver anything to write home about, we’d like to encourage readers to guard against complacency.

With year after year of this, it’s easy to think that a major hurricane — what might be called “the big one” in West Coast hurricane terms or in Talladega NASCAR crash terms — will never strike here. And, understandable though it may be, you would be wrong to think that.

Virginia has had a lot of near-misses and glancing blows since Isabel, with a couple of notable October storms, Sandy and Matthew, dominating the charts. Irene was a bad storm, but for many people still doesn’t stick out as much as Isabel.

But as meteorologist Mike Dutter pointed out in a story on today’s front page, Dorian and indeed any of those storms could have been much worse with just a slight shift in the track.

So we urge you to continue taking preparedness seriously and continue to take storms seriously. Make those emergency plans, assemble and update your kits every summer and before every storm, get the insurance you need, know your zone and evacuate if it’s recommended or mandated.

We would hate to see loss of life in a future storms because of the near-misses of the past.