Windy camping

[maxiesmom]

Can you guys give me some advice on how to deal with high winds when you are tent camping? I was camping last weekend, and it got very windy. I have a decent size Eureka tent, about 6x6 with a 70" peak height. It became very windy, and the walls were being pushed in so much I was freaking out about the tent collapsing, and was wondering how I would get out of all of that tenting! The campround has church service on Sunday morning, and when we went back to our site one of my rain-fly tie outs had been pulled right out of the ground!

I have no clue as to what I should have done to deal with the winds. Is it best to leave the tent zipped up all the way, or to leave some openings for the air to blow thru? I had to have the rain-fly on, because we kept having showers all day long. Would it do any good to try to set up some kind of wind break with some line and a tarp?

How wind resistent are tents anyway?

Any ideas or tips?

 

[shocker]

Today's tents with the shock cords for tent poles are made to be flexible, so they should bend but not break. You mentioned after the storm the only difference you saw was that a fly tie down was undone, so I assume everything else popped right back into place If the tent did not have that kind of give and fliexibility it would have shredded the thing to pieces. (Ask some of the dis-RVer's how their awnings have faired during high winds on those rigid supports ). If the wind is high enough (I live in Kansas and it doesn't get any windier than right here) there is no stopping it. I recently went thru an overnight storm with the kids and they did freak out at the walls, my DD kept asking me why I was trying to sleep thru it? I told her " 'cause it's 2am and I'm tired, it'll pass" and it did. Our tent also stood perfect in the morning having done it's job, it's just a little freaky while it's happening. If you put up a tarp it will likely just shred that, the best wind break is a row of bushes/trees, a structure, or some hills (we don't have many here).

 

[stky6]

Being someone who has tied their tent to the truck during Lake Erie thunderstorms, if you don't have a truck handy just make sure you have some good long tent stakes and put ALL of the tie downs out. I add extra stake outs to the factory installed ones to just add a bit more support to the tent, on the corners they usually only have one tie down rope, I'll add two more. I stay away from the plastic yellow tent stakes, to many bad experiences with them, I use the 10 inch nail type. The tent will sway in the wind, just the way they're made. Best thing to do is break out the snuggle sacks and wait til it's over