thunderstorms

[reneegavin]

Do thunderstorms concern anyone else while camping besides me? I always get super nervous during storms. We have a Jay Flight Swift SLX. Are you generally safe barring any horrible wind? What do you do if the storm turns severe, or God forbid, a tornado warning pops up? During the day, there are usually buildings open in the campground, but most of those shut down at night, except of course the bathrooms.

[Swinepartner]

Yea. Storms worry me. But I always try to keep up w/ my weather app and storm alert on my phone. Not much else u can do other than that and know wher your closest bath house is for shelter.

[Tunce the traveler]

When strong winds come in I do a full hook up and just wait it out. I hope connecting it to the SUV helps hold it down.

[Mustang65]

Two years ago we were at Wilson Lake KS (dry camping) and on our last night they were forecasting thunderstorms and tornado warnings in the early morning. We contacted the camp coordinator and asked if we could move to a location next to the concrete washroom building, he had no problem with that since we were leaving in the morning. We did have some nasty thunderstorms and high winds early that morning, but luckily no tornadoes.

We left at 7am and the sky was dark with rolling clouds, not good. The weather map showed that there were red storm cells north and west of us, so we took off. The interstate had about 5 or 6 semi trailers overturned off the side of the interstate, from the high winds overnight. When we got to Colorado, we watched the news and the town just to the east of Lake Wilson was leveled by the tornado.

My suggestion, know where the CG has their bathrooms/showers as a place to go to in case it gets really bad. The ones we have seen were concrete which would be 100 times better than the TT.

In 1980 we had a house leveled in northern IL that was 30 days into construction, all the windows were installed, but the garage doors were not installed yet. The tornado (according to the insurance company storm chasers) skipped over our house and without the garage doors it acted like a giant umbrella. It took the 18" x 50' "I" beam and tossed it about 50 feet behind the rest of the house parts. The lucky part was that they were behind schedule, or we would have been living in it already.

Don

[Jrmay25]

I never use to give storms or even tornado warnings a 2nd thought while camping. However, back in Feb 2013 a tornado hit our campgrounds and literally destroyed close to 30 campers, including our 2013 Jayco 365BHS. Seeing what they can do in a matter of seconds to a 12000lb camper certainly changed my perception from not giving them 2nd thoughts, to now I have a weather radio and am much more attentive.
Thank God, the tornado hit 2 days before opening day of trout season and none of us had made it down to stay in our campers. Otherwise, I have no doubts that lives would have been lost that night as the tornado rolled several units upwards of 150'.

[arkhillbilly]

I always use at least 4 inches of wood or plastic underneath each jack, unhook and store the power source , tv cable, etc., when a storm is in the area. Nothing grounded to attract lighting. High winds and tornados scare the hell out of me, have experienced what they can do to any building, but I still look for the strongest I can find.

[DocBrown]

Storms in general don't bother me. High winds do. A trailer is no place to be when winds are strong. 55 mph+ are when it starts to get really scary. If it's strong enough to break trees, it's strong enough to lift a trailer off the ground.

[gcloss]

My biggest fear is the wind will take down trees and cause damage to RVs and people. We camp once a year in the Adirondacks near Lake George. Thunderstorms come up rather quickly in the summer months. We were camping in Lake George RV Park in the early 80's and a severe thunderstorm rolled through. It only lasted about 10 minutes. It took down a good size tree that fell right on top of a pop-up with kids inside. Fortunately no one was hurt, but the pop-up was destroyed.

[Kykids]

I am not generally afraid of storms, however the CG where we are putting our TT for the summer has no bath house or any building! I have thought about this but have not come up with a solution other than watch the weather and head home if sever weather is coming our way.

[David472]

A thunderstorm in general doesn't bother me, but falling trees do, as do tornado winds. If the weather looks iffy, we check with CG staff about if there is a storm shelter either in the CG or in a nearby community. Have had some nearby tornadoes, but have been lucky. Keep the weather radio handy.

[Jagiven]

I pay attention, and I make sure we are prepped for rain and storms, I cannot recall a time that I was truly scared, but I have been nervous a few times. I have ridden out straight line winds a few times in tents, in the TT, in a bathroom house, in a neighboring concrete building, so far no issues. I have had a tornado go over our house, luckily it touched down a mile away. We also had a tornado go over us (Siren, Wi) in the late night while towing a canoe trailer as head to the BWCA. That particular case we did not know it was a tornado until the following week when we left the BWCA and we found out the town was destroyed, we actually stopped under the freeway underpass as the wind and rain was so bad we could not see at all.

As I pull into a CG I do pay attention to structures and where hazards are located. For example most of our state parks now have at least one bath house made of concrete and are designated storm shelters, it appears that as they replace then they are built as storm shelters. But not all of them are strong enough in my opinion. We have been in camp when the sheriff has rolled through on his bullhorn telling everyone to take shelter due to severe storms. In a bad storm with no shelter available lying flat in a ditch or in a corn field as flat can be, it will protect you. However, under a tree, you may have issues with branches falling, or lightning strikes. Two places we go have large concrete storm sewer sections above ground, and the kids play on and in them on the average day. But they are the CG’s storm shelter.

Last bad storm in this HTT, hit us in Montana 2 years ago. Straight line winds, hit us broad sided, I guess the wind speeds were in excess of 80+ mph. The HTT really rocked about. We were inside the HTT, DW and kid just kept reading, me I watched the canvas get blown in on the upwind side, glad there was the cable support for the bunk ends to help take some stress of the seams. By watching things move in the HTT and feeling the bounce, I guessed the HTT tilted over 2 inches as the wind blew, taking the upwind stabilizers well off the ground and probably lifting the wheels on that side too. I expected to see on the downwind side the stabilizers damaged. We experienced no damage at all.

Key is to be observant, think about what you might need to do in an emergency, before there ever is one.

[Paulx213]

We rarely get thunderstorms and never get tornados. We do have a lot of huge old trees in British Columbia parks and I've gotten nervous a few times about one of those coming down in a wind storm onto my trailer. The really big ones make some seriously creepy noises when they are moving a lot.

[reneegavin]

How about lightening? Are you generally safe in the camper? If the weather forecast looks really grim, we will usually reschedule, but my work schedule changed this summer, so I can't really change my requested days off. We got stuck one year in a situation where there were tornado warning where we were staying and the whole way back to our house. That was HORRIFYING!

[David472]

I don't worry much about lightning. In fact, I enjoy the light show. IMO, your chances of being struck are very small. The more likely risk would be an electrical surge coming thru the electrical power cord.