Having tent camped at Cape Hatteras and Cape Lookout National Seashores on the NC Outer Banks for over fifty years, I've seen some pretty good storms roll through. I've used my vehicle as a windbreak, filled coolers with sand and placed them inside the tent to hold it down and flipped picnic tables over to reduce their profile and tied my guy lines to their skyward pointing legs.
Its interesting to check out the campground dumpsters the day after one of these hits. I've got a couple of functional EZ-Ups pieced together from wind damaged units that were discarded. And several of the NPS staff who work there have told me they haven't bought any new camping gear in years.
Whenever we suffer through one of these, I'm reminded of Lyndon Johnson's comment on the Viet Nam war as I approached draft age in the mid sixties (paraphrased as I'm sure this isn't exactly accurate) "Being President right now is a lot like being a jackass in a west Texas hailstorm. I can't run. I can't hide. And I can't make it stop."
