What are your high wind stories?
Given the morphing of the rollover story and the interest. I thought a high wind story thread might be fun. We've had some high wind in the area and while I've been camping. According to the weat...
Forum Discussion
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
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
