What are your high wind stories?

People!
It looks to me like the Anza Borrego is a wind trap! So many high wind stories come right out of there. The only season that is exempt from high winds there is summer...not a season for me in the Colorado Desert.
jefe

We experienced 55+ MPH winds in the Anza-Borrego Desert a few years back: This is why we buy high-quality $400+ tents. The model in the video uses Fiberglas poles utilizing helicopter-blade technology and is a Sierra Designs product, a 1987 "Base Camp" 4-man model here in its 24th season of regular use. My then 11-year-old daughter is sleeping soundly inside during the early morning windstorm...

Desert Winds 1

Desert Winds 2

This past April was absolutely the worst wind experience I have had in the camper. The dogs and I were in Anza Borrego State Park and camped at a campground up in the mountains. The day we set up was beautiful but the wind was building all night. Foolish me thought perhaps I would be better off nearer the visitor's center so down the mountain we went. BIG mistake as it was even worse. As I was driving down the mountain the wind at one point hit from behind and neatly folded both mirrors forward leaving me blind except for the backup camera that I have hooked up to the running lights. A second night in the lee near the library was better but not pleasant. There had been windy times before but never as bad as that spell.

This was my first year heading to burning man in 2008. I was pulling a 23' TT behind my 1st gen dodge D350 DRW but the transmission blew half way through the trip and we scrambled to rent a uhaul and continue on. The next day we got stuck in traffic on the way into the event when a major wind storm hit.

I was already in a bad mood because I was now looking at the cost of the transmission rebuild and had been driving a uhaul with NO trailer brakes that was overloaded. While stopped in traffic I decided to get out and get into the trailer for some reason. I opened the door just when a major gust hit... and it ripped the door apart where the hinges attached. It cleanly pulled the entire hinge side wood frame off.

I was in shock standing on the edge of the desert now holding my trailer door in my hands wondering WTF just happened. I dropped the door inside the trailer and had to get moving with traffic again. My buddy jumped into the trailer and using plastic bags and tape attempted to block the doorway... in the middle of a wind storm. This was not in any way successful and after 45 minutes of fighting tape, plastic, and wind mother nature had deposited a large amount of dust all over the insides of my new-to-me trailer.

When we got in we had to wait in another staging area for a couple of hours and during that time I managed to glue my door back together. Luckily I had a box of various glues and some clamps handy. Using epoxy putty and a couple of other adhesives I reassembled the door. A couple of hours later we mounted the door back on it's hinges and it has been working well ever since.

Wind. I think it was a contributing factor for us buying a small hardside. But before then,
1. 1968. Saline Valley, warm springs, Death Valley, CA.
We were camped around a spring out of our 1966 FJ40 ragtop. It was March, so cots were in order for me and my new bride. It was so cool (a term which has gone up and down several times since then) to lay head-to-head right next to the steaming pools. Ah, nude springs bathing, the skies were clear, the air was still. However, sometime during the night was our first run in with the dreaded Haboob. It hit like a freight train and showered each of us trying to sleep in sleeping bags with sand and gravel. As we slunk down lower and lower into the bags, the wind never let up until about 0 dark thirty we decided sleeping sitting up in the L.C. was a slightly better choice. With silted, white looking alkalai 'white face' and grit in our teeth we rode out the night. Now the Toyota was not air tight and sifting sand was all over once the sun started to rise and the wind let up. The cots were no where to be seen and the bags were a ways away. We collected our stuff and started the rest of our desert campout/jeep trip.
2. 1974. This was a teachable moment in our lives. Around April we invited our good friends, who do not camp or 4wd to go with us to (again now) Death Valley. Again a Haboob hit during the night. We had our Toyota FJ55 and they drove their Peugeot diesel and we all slept in a BIG tent. I had loaned the tent out last fall and did not pre-inspect its condition before we left. Anyway, the borrowers had broken the zipper to the front door. Again we all slunk down lower and lower into the bags until the wife of our friend crawled out the door and sat up in the back seat of the Peugeot till dawn. Then, without fanfare, they packed up their sandy stuff and said sayonara. The moral is: we don't invite neophites to go camping or truck camping anymore. No one wins. You just want them to enjoy it like you do, but it usually does not happen that way.
3. New Years Eve, 1998. We all lived in La Crescenta and La Canada in So. Cal. and had a big party at one of our homes. The theme was to come dressed up as one of the cast of Blazing Saddles or was it Quest for Fire. I can't recall. It was fun. Then shortly after midnight we all went home. The front door was opened and a howling sound like a jet engine powered in the door. That place was exceptionally well insulated. I stepped out and looked up (as we were in the lee side) and saw palm fronds, tree parts, trash cans etc, blow right over the top of the house and down hill. The dredded Santa Ana winds. Clocked at over 100 mph, there were a lot of trees down the next day. Just along the Foothill Freeway, Caltrans reported a few days later that just on their right of way 10,000 trees had relocated into the prone position.
I've never had a real woe with wind and the TC. Rocking, white knuckle ride, yes, but no real danger of blowing over.....so far.
4. THE strongest wind gusts ever for us in the TC was near Dos Cabezas in Anza Borrego Desert State Park. It was January and raining so i put up the awning, such that it is:

We sat out of the rain, under the tarp for a while before retiring to our mobile boudoir. It is so quiet in the box that when the first gust hit, i thought it was an earthquake! There was a couple hours of buffeting and during that time there was a rattling of aluminum tent poles and stakes on the sides and roof and then nothing. The next AM i had to scour the landscape to find our awning hardware scattered about 150 away, near the wye in the road in the pic above, the tarp wrapped around some brush a little worse for wear. With the dawn came some high receding clouds with no hint of the close proximity isobars of the night before.
jefe

Living in Kodiak Alaska, we get wind. In fact wind advisories do not even go out till the winds are forecast to hit 50mph.... We have experienced winds here to 120 mph. As for the camper, the Avion has rode out storms on and off the truck, at home and while traveling around Alaska.
Before I got the Avion, there was a Bigfoot in a mid 90's dually Chevy parked out at the USCG Base, near the water. The gusts during that storm hit the 90's, and the owner was sleeping in the TC, when the gust hit, blowing the Bigfoot out of the Chevy. Something gave way in the mounting, tore the whole side of the bed over on the Chevy, and the camper was laying on it's side. The owner, had to call his buddies on board one of the ships to come help get him out! Bigfoot had some scuffing and stress fractures in the glass, but held up amazingly well.
We were on a trip to the Mainland, and were traveling south on the Richardson Highway from Delta Junction to Paxton. The winds were so bad, several other TC's had pulled over, and were inching along at 5 to 10 mph on the shoulder. The Avion hardly felt the wind at all, just a bit more than if I was just driving the truck solo. The winds were reportedly 80 to 90mph gusts with sustained winds of 50 to 60. It seems that the rounded corners of the Avion do not give the wind an "edge" to catch. When the wind hits any side, the pressure is relieved off the top like a plane wing. We have parked stationary in sustained 60mph winds, and while we rocked a bit, the truck and camper did fine. I thought I'd miss the storage in the upper compartments due to the rounded corners, but for Alaska driving, I don't need so much stuff anyway, and both drive-ability, and fuel mileage show for it! I get 14 to 15MPG with 11,000 lbs a 5.4L gas V-8, 6spd manual and 3.73 gears with 34" tires! So let the wind Blow! It always does here in Alaska!
Garry

I've camped in it, not a worry on the truck, was a worry the first time I tried storing it. I fixed it, as I tell of in the blog entry below, but I believe now that the wood there was weakened when this happened, which later led to the corner failure.

From my blog, in late 2006:

Friday, December 15, 2006

The Score, Camper 1, Storm 0 (12-15-2006)

This was originally posted back in December 2006 to the RV.Net forums, where I posted alot of my travel tales over the years. Now, I'm adding them to this blog, which will house my travels going forward into the future and any other related posts, such as projects on the camper and such.


For those that live in the PNW, you know that we got the living **** beat out of us last night with a windstorm.

My trusty KIT was doing its winter hibernation out at a friend's farm further up into the Coastal mountains of Oregon. For the majority of the night, the camper didn't budge. That was up till one gigantic gust, from the sounds of it, somewhere probably up in the hurricane range of damned close to 100 mph.

My KIT was resting on cement blocks under the jack pads and cement blocks under my stacker jacks under the floor. WAS being the key word here.

Wind swung the front end down hill 2 feet lifting the front jacks off their perches and tipping the stacker jacks over. The front legs dug into the ground after going a foot in the air and sank themselves about 2-3. The rear end lifted up as the stabilizers under the floor twisted, leaving it perched on the dug in front jacks and the twisted rear stabilzers.

Fortunately, I had a few favors left over upstairs and promptly used them up right then and there. Camper remained perched like this the rest of the night till I could come out this morning and use a 3 ton car jack to hoist it out of the dirt.

The damage?

I'm going to need to drill out the front lag bolt holes in the passenger side jack and redo them, but the mount was still stuck strong enough to support the camper (Thank God I had just reinforced those with an injection of Polyurethane glue into a couple bolt holes) while I redid its foundation and now it rests upon a solid concrete foundation under the floor. There is zero wiggle now in the camper as all the weight is being directed down through its foundation of concrete instead of four spindly corner jacks and some stabilizers.

Yeah.... I hate the wind now.



UPDATE:

Well, on the 31st of December on a very cold day, I finally got back to my poor camper to get the jack assembly off.

The good news is there's no splitting or damage to the corner material, the corner, made from 1x3s took no damage other than having some very crappy SCREWS pulled out of it. These things weren't even lag bolts. In a sense, the storm did me a big favor by shifting the camper and causing these screws to start letting go with it near the ground instead of some point later on with the camper up the air while loading.



You can see where the camper getting drug along the ground made the bottom screws pull loose from the wood, breaking my rather messy caulking job. The bottom screw I had removed prior to taking the picture to see what was holding everything together.



While I'm certain the planned upgrade ot 5/16 lag bolts and glue in every hole would maybe have been sufficient, I don't want to take any chances, so the corner bracket is at my welder buddies place getting some more metal added to it so that we can tie into the underside of the wing in addition to the existing holes.

Till my new beefier corner bracket is done I've sealed the holes and the seam in the two parts of the skin over with some heavy duty aluminum tape. I'll be cleaning the whole area up after the new bracket is done for the application of new butyl tape and re-installation of the bracket.

Many years ago I was traveling on 400 in SE Kansas on my way home from Table Rock Lake. It was one of those days like so many others where the wind was howling from the south with gusts over 45. At the time I had an 82 Chevy pickup with the 6.2l diesel and an Idle Time TC and was using the four corner stake bed tiedowns, I could watch in my mirror and see the TC lift 1-2" off of the bed every time one of the big gusts would hit, I was just sure I was going to loose my TC that day.

Where's Sleepy, he has rode out a Tornado down in Texas a few years back.. A harrowing story!

Jim

Three times in wind over 70...

Monument valley sand storm while camping in the lot next to the hotel.. I could see it coming and alerted several folks in MH's to point their rigs into the wind that was beginning to pick up.. I turned the Truck n BFoot into the wind.... Nasty red dust was everywhere in the camper after the storm... Ranger said gusts to 80... Camper shook a bit.

Mojave Desert.... Gusts during the night to 70... Shook the camper and howled did not position the T n C into the wind... just rode it out.

Florence, Oregon.... Gusts during the night to over 70.. Shook the camper along with the rain... Another side assault....Just rode it out... Don't sleep very well though!

Jim