Question:

Why is orb2db creating waveform directories which are very old or in the future?

Answer:

It seems to be a common occurrence for dataloggers to become confused about what time it really is. We have seen packet time tags which are either far in the past or far in the future.

orb2db can throw away such packets, if you configure too_new and too_old properly in the parameter file. Otherwise, it attempts to preserve all recorded data. You should find corresponding records in the database also. You might even be able to fix the time tags later.

The best thing is to fix the dataloggers; failing this, you will have to clean up the database and waveform files either by hand or with some script.