What's the worst storm you have been in while camping?

Worst was not a storm in the traditional sense. Not even cloudy. But an unusual weather system caused extremely high winds at an RV park in southern Colorado. RV park told everyone in an area containing a lot of very tall spruce trees to move to the other end of the large park. Good thing. 8-10 large trees were blown down and would have crushed several rigs. Only casualty was a new Dodge (yes they were still Dodge then) dually had a tree fall directly on the cab and crush it flat to the window sills.

mabynack wrote:
I guess my worst camping experience involved sleeping in tents in the desert and having the local populace shooting at me. Iraq sucked.

Best post today!

Matt B

I guess my worst camping experience involved sleeping in tents in the desert and having the local populace shooting at me. Iraq sucked.

Hurricane Opal. We evacuated from Panama City and went to Fort Rucker Alabama. The storm track shifted and we ended up right in the path of the storm. Wind speeds at the park were clocked at 106 mph and there were so many trees down that we were blocked in for two days. A big oak tree fell within feet of our RV. The power went out during the night and it felt like the RV was going to get blown over.

I have 2:
1) before we had our trailer, we were tent camping on Georgian Bay. We had a beautiful waterfront spot. At about 10pm the wind picks up, and I mean picks up. I checked my phone and the weather app said no problems here. I was getting concerned as it was getting really strong blowing everything around. I finally clued in to check the marine forcast on Georgian bay and they had a marine weather advisory warning of gale force winds up to 100km/h from the north, and we were on the south shore. We ended up parking the car in front of the tent for the night to block the wind, but by AM the inside of the tent was covered in a fine grit of sand that was blown off the beach, up the side our tent and dropped inside the netting. We also threw out the what was left of the kitchen tent that morning. This is what made us decide to get a trailer.
2) Last July we were at PEI National Park when Hurricane Arthur blew thru. Power went out in the middle of the night and it rained hard and trees were blown down all over the place. Lucky for us: it was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time it got to us, we were in a stand of small pine trees, on the leeward side of the island, and had battery powers. The next AM we had to head home to Ontario. We were driving thru New Brunswick from Miramichi to Grand Falls. This is about 100km of the most isolated highway in Eastern Canada, no cell service, virtually not a single building the entire 100km. There were trees down on the highway continually for about 50km of the drive on this road. I spent about half of the time on this road driving on the left shoulder (with the trailer) to get past all the fallen trees. pic:

We were tent camping in Joshua Tree, and were just arriving back to the campsite from a day of off-roading. At evening were were overcome by a sudden sandstorm. Visibility was down to maybe ten feet, and the wind smacked the tent flat on me. My wife jumped from the SUV and helped me out of the dark and rapidly filling tent.

The suddenness of the storm, the reduced visibility, and the element of fear and panic made calm thought nearly impossible. There was no way to sort things out, so we shoved the tent, containing the sleeping bags, clothes and everything else into the back of the SUV. We spent a cold and damp night in the front seats of the SUV, one dog shoved in the mess in the back and one in my wife's lap. Because of the wind and sand, we had to keep the windows closed, which made everything damp and sticky by morning.

We moved on to Death Valley and spend several hours getting showers and shaking the sand out of our belongings so they would be useful again.

Several days later, I was diagnosed with mechanical pneumonia from sand inhalation, and spent a couple of feverish and incoherent days in a hotel room in Flagstaff, narrowly avoiding hospitalization.

Matt B

November, 2013 (Sunday), we were in CG in East Peoria Illinois, which shares a border with Washington on one side and Peoria on the other. We were still having coffee late morning when the warning sirens went off. Thought it was a mistake until I turned on television. Several tornadoes had been reported in the area, with one less than 5 miles away headed our direction!

Needless to say we were in the F350 and heading into Washington where our friends live. They have a rather nice basement which is where we wanted to be, UNDERGROUND!

The drive was only about 10 minutes away but the tornado changed its path and tried to intercept us. I know they say "you can't out run a tornado", but I guarantee you that at 90mph you certainly can. It was a EF4 and destroyed hundreds of homes in the area. We wish we had taken some pics as it passed directly behind us but I was too busy driving and the DW was too busy praying!

Later that day when we returned to the CG there wasn't even a tree branch down. We should have stayed there.

Re: your 1st picture, you had your awning out?

Les just say ALL our shoes were soaked and we wished we had packed the hip waders.

Thank Jebus for the 4 wheel drive and a tow chain.

Too many to list! Some highlights: 5-hour thunderstorm on Mt. Desert Island notable for the intense, red lightning! Pre-KOA Association Island where the storm gusts were so strong it toppled over a small family in a pop-up. James Island with Hurricane Floyd!