Severe Weather...

[TTMartin]

Originally Posted by Voyager

Needless to say, I keep my eye on the weather.

We carry a small, cheap Cobra marine band portable radio that also has weather alert built in.

Looking at Amazon they now have portable GMRS radios with weather alert too. Those can do double duty, for the person guiding you when you're backing up, and as a weather alert radio.

Midland - GXT1000VP4 GMRS Two-Way Radio with NOAA Weather Scan + Alert

[padlin]

We were there for 7 nights starting Feb 19 2016, so somewhere in there.

[Mike Lewis]

Originally Posted by padlin

We were there for 7 nights starting Feb 19 2016, so somewhere in there.

I wondered why I didn't remember this. I was camping on the Space Coast after attending the Orlando Hamcation. I missed the storm. That's okay.

[steve dunham]

What I miss from years past is a good old fashioned winter blizzard
I took my 3 daughters ( 14, 10 & 7) up North near Duluth to my buddies hunting shack for a short father daughter bonding session . In two days we got over 24”” of snow , winds picked up to 60 mph and then the temps dropped to below zero . Luckily we had plenty of firewood and a good double barrel stove , wool blankets , enough food and plenty of snow to melt for water . The walk to the outhouse was quite an adventure . It took 3 or 4 days for the county to get the roads plowed and opened . Climate change has ruined winter in my estimation .
It used to be a source of pride surviving the cold and snow , now we have winters like Florida !
We used to go Ice fishing every year on Good Friday
for the Spring Crappies now you need a boat and sun block .

[Iowa Dave]

The phenomenon that I notice most now is when a significant snowfall is predicted for a Friday night or Saturday. Customers flock to the grocery stores in numbers that make the holiday shopping look pale. You’d think the roads weren’t going to be reopened for two weeks. Then the weather comes and it’s a two inch snow that melts off in sunny spots before the plow truck can get there but it’s time and a half plow pay so they are out grinding off plow bits, chewing up curbs and burning diesel anyway.
Then comes body eating salt whether it’s needed or not. Oh well, I guess it’s progress. I was just thinking about those stacked barrel stoves the other day. They could put out a lot of heat stoked with some black locust or Osage orange.
Iowa Dave

[dfandrews]

Around here in So. Calif., here is our weather story. ( ).
Yeah, that's it.


So on to a story: what I have noticed is, the worst drivers are moms in their SUV's (my old friend Bill would say: "in their station wagons"), when it's raining about 0.1 inch/hr. here, hurrying too fast, rolling stop signs, to the elem. school to pick up their little darlings so they don't get wet.
Why, back in my day, we would walk to and from school, up hill both ways, in a fog downpour so heavy that droplets would form on your forehead. Such is what we endured going to school in coastal Ventura.

[steve dunham]

Originally Posted by Iowa Dave

The phenomenon that I notice most now is when a significant snowfall is predicted for a Friday night or Saturday. Customers flock to the grocery stores in numbers that make the holiday shopping look pale. You’d think the roads weren’t going to be reopened for two weeks. Then the weather comes and it’s a two inch snow that melts off in sunny spots before the plow truck can get there but it’s time and a half plow pay so they are out grinding off plow bits, chewing up curbs and burning diesel anyway.
Then comes body eating salt whether it’s needed or not. Oh well, I guess it’s progress. I was just thinking about those stacked barrel stoves the other day. They could put out a lot of heat stoked with some black locust or Osage orange.
Iowa Dave

There isn’t much good hardwood that far North , mostly poplar , pine , cedar and a little birch
That means your up every 2 or 3 hours to feed the stove / fire ( Poplar doesn’t hold coals well )
So it’s sweat and roast till the fires burns down and then freeze till you stoke the fire up again
The best place to sleep in the winter IMHO , was up in the hay loft above a bunch of dairy cows
The heat was nice and even .!

[Patandlinda]

Originally Posted by dfandrews

Around here in So. Calif., here is our weather story. ( ).
Yeah, that's it.


So on to a story: what I have noticed is, the worst drivers are moms in their SUV's (my old friend Bill would say: "in their station wagons"), when it's raining about 0.1 inch/hr. here, hurrying too fast, rolling stop signs, to the elem. school to pick up their little darlings so they don't get wet.
Why, back in my day, we would walk to and from school, up hill both ways, in a fog downpour so heavy that droplets would form on your forehead. Such is what we endured going to school in coastal Ventura.

Yup Don remember walking to and from school . I think it was at least a mile . The worst part was having to cross the streets and get soaked . The sewers didn’t work great then . This was in the North Hollywood and Burbank then . Only when I got to go to High School then I got to go on a bus .
On another note is it just us or does it not seem real wam this summer ? Pat

[padlin]

The last 4 or 5 years we go to a watering ban from about June till Sept or Oct. Never used to have such. I'm giving up on the front lawn. It feels like we have less snow then we did when I was a kid, don't know if that's true or not though.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by TTMartin

We carry a small, cheap Cobra marine band portable radio that also has weather alert built in.

Looking at Amazon they now have portable GMRS radios with weather alert too. Those can do double duty, for the person guiding you when you're backing up, and as a weather alert radio.

Midland - GXT1000VP4 GMRS Two-Way Radio with NOAA Weather Scan + Alert

Actually, I have a Sangean PR-D9W AM FM Weather Alert radio and I highly recommend it for its decent fidelity and good reception. It sort of harkens back to the old portable transistor but, it’s nothing like that being digital. It lacks a lanyard or handle, it’s only negative. At home, Weather Radios don’t work for us. The alerts are too broad. We live on the boundary of 3 counties and a fourth three miles up the road. So when a storm hits we get alerts from every which way. But for many areas I’m sure they are a welcome feature to have. For camping, I’ll always have the Sangean with me.

[C&G in FL]

Since it is always with me, I rely on my iPhone apps to advise me of any severe weather. One of my apps (My Radar Pro) provides audio alerts of impending bad weather and utilizes location services. Obviously, when off the cellular grid it isn’t going to work but there is no guarantee that a weather radio would work either. And I don’t see any valid purpose to add a radio to the mix when my phone provides me with emergency information.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by C&G in FL

Since it is always with me, I rely on my iPhone apps to advise me of any severe weather. One of my apps (My Radar Pro) provides audio alerts of impending bad weather and utilizes location services. Obviously, when off the cellular grid it isn’t going to work but there is no guarantee that a weather radio would work either. And I don’t see any valid purpose to add a radio to the mix when my phone provides me with emergency information.

I don’t disagree at all. The biggest reason I have the Sangean with me is because I like to listen to the radio 🙂

[P&L]

While on our way to Yellowstone National Park, we stayed at Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park in Montana. Our first evening there I learned about microbursts. Wow! Scary! You can have those terensial winds and I'll take my chances with earthquakes! I never knew about microbursts (and they sound harmless), but it was the most terrifying moments I experienced in a long time. Trees were down, our neighbor didn't have their fire out and we helped them douse out their fire that was aiming for the dry trees in the winds. It could have ended very differently. The large RVs had their awnings pulled out of their rig. I gather this was a small one, but yikes!

[Donna D.]

I can often get an AM and/or FM radio signal, even if there's zero cell service. I think it's prudent to have a weather ban radio, even if it's a cheapy.

[steve dunham]

On a good day , our cell phones work less than half the time , so relying on them for weather alerts / tornado alerts would be just plain stupid IMHO
Since we’re 8 miles from the closest town hoping to hear the town siren is not going to happen
So far a good weather radio has worked fairly well
I have absolutely no trust in cell phones so we still have a land line

[Iowa Dave]

I stayed at Lewis and Clark caverns in 1969. I had a motorcycle and stretched a tarp
Over it and staked it into the rocky ground with pole barn nails I woke up to it snowing and about 30 degrees. A busy western pocket gopher had pushed a mound up under my head and was looking at me from about a foot away. To get out of the snow, I came down out of the park to a lower elevation where it was about 35 degrees and raining. But by 6PM that night I was at my destination on the Selway River on the Nez Perce National Forest. Pulled the Lolo pass in about 4 inches of wet snow. Went to work the next day as they were short on help and had some money left in the budget.
Went past the park several times since but never stopped or camped.

We carry a weather radio with Am and Fm radio. It has three rechargeable AA batteries plus I always have spares. It also has a little crank dynamo if all else fails. In winter my guilty pleasure is listening to our local FM jazz station with an ear bud after I’ve been sent to bed. Just like I did when I was a kid with a crystal set.
Iowa Dave

[dfandrews]

Originally Posted by Patandlinda

......
On another note is it just us or does it not seem real warm this summer ? Pat

You're right, Pat. This August weather is like June gloom. Foggy mornings, then scattered sun the rest of the day. We're getting a sea breeze in the afternoons, but it is definitely more humid than usual, with lower high temps.
It will be telling, to see when (and if) we get Santa Ana winds, and how fast and hot they'll be.
We haven't even had much in the way of even piddly little earthquakes: A couple above Lake Casitas and one in the Sespe Wilderness, oh, and the continuing swarm (15 this week) in Sylmar.

[emers382]

Long before our Escapes we had a 13 foot Gypsy sticky and were camping at Rushing River Prov. park near Kenora in NW ON. We had a vicious storm, trailer shaking, Beth worried the trailer would roll down the cliff by us, our boys running from their flooded tent, my sister and husband in the next site standing in their tent trying to hold it down.

There was a tornado, many trees down trailers blocked from leaving, a few crushed. A six year old boy was killed in a tent by a falling tree at a church camp six miles away. One enterprising family who had the corner of their trailer smashed covered it with a tarp and stayed the rest of the weekend!

Even longer ago (1954) the remnants of Hurricane Hazel which devastated Toronto took down a tree outside my bedroom window in Kentville NS. Fortunately it fell away from the house so I'm here to tell the story.

[Ruthe]

We had 8 inches of rain in Iowa a few years ago -- Timberline RV Park-- 3 tornadoes were just few miles away. The camp host came around to tell us that if it got really bad they'd alert us to go into the bathrooms. That was a scary night.

But the one that gives us the most ptsd happened when we had our airstream in Wisconsin. We had a choice between two sites -- selected one and during the night there was a ferocious thunder storm. When we went out the next morning we saw that lightning had struck a large tree in the site we didn't choose -- and the tree fell across the trailer pad -- our airstream would have been crushed. Fortunately no one else chose that site either.

[Patandlinda]

Originally Posted by dfandrews

You're right, Pat. This August weather is like June gloom. Foggy mornings, then scattered sun the rest of the day. We're getting a sea breeze in the afternoons, but it is definitely more humid than usual, with lower high temps.
It will be telling, to see when (and if) we get Santa Ana winds, and how fast and hot they'll be.
We haven't even had much in the way of even piddly little earthquakes: A couple above Lake Casitas and one in the Sespe Wilderness, oh, and the continuing swarm (15 this week) in Sylmar.

What we thought Don . Strange ,the weather for sure . Can do without big earthquakes
! Pat