Weather & camping - your threshold of ok?

[beardad]

Living in the state of Washington. I have never been camping where it HASN'T rained. ever.

 

We don't get much thunder storms up here. is it something to worry about? I could see being worried about lightning.

[Scoutfish]

Beardad,

 

The thunder itself is no big deal.......It's thunders compant that CAN BE an issue.

 

Thunder ( in a nutshell) is pretty much turbulence and friction between cold air and warm air. But you know that right?

 

Again, no big deal, but that turbulence can create all kinds of nasty winds, wind gusts, hail, lightning, etc..

 

Thunder is actually great at putting alot of people into a deeper sleep ( me included) , but the "company" that thunder keeps is the trouble.

 

Not sure about some of the other East Coast states...but in NC in July and August - we have an afternoon thunderstorm EVERY SINGLE DAY. Usually between 4:30 pm and 7:00 pm. Right when the air starts cooling down, yet the heat starts bleeding up out of the earth. Get's pretty nasty real quick sometimes: Skies darken as quick as that, wind picks up, tornado warnings for a 7 county area, wind gusts and sometimes even hail. Then it rains for maybe... 20 minutes or so...then it's all over. The sky lightens up for an hour until it gets dark due to night time.

 

That's the "norm" here in the NC,SC, Ga area.(This message has been edited by scoutfish)

[Engineer61]

 

From Weather.com

 

By definition, thunder is the loud noise that occurs when atmospheric gases are suddenly heated by a discharge of lightning.

 

I don't think I'd minimize thunder very much...

 

Electrically speaking, tents are excellent conductors...aluminum or carbon fiber poles tied directly to ground with metal tent stakes.

 

Of course at the energies we are talking about, the line between insulator and conductor is largely non-existent.

 

Wet, dust-impregnated nylon might make a Faraday cage, but I wouldn't bet my life on it.

 

For me...when it calls for wet...I get.

 

 

 

[Basementdweller]

Wow

 

 

Never heard that first definition of Thunder. Scoutfish did you take your severe weather training yet?

 

 

 

[moxieman]

Basementdweller, I don't think he attended the same meteorology schools I did (BS from Plymouth State in '92 and MS from Texas Tech in '95). Or maybe they've redefined Lightning in the last 15 years.

 

Engineer 61: You wouldn't do much camping here in Maine.(This message has been edited by moxieman)

[SctDad]

I think what ScoutFish is refereing to is that here in NC, thunder is not a reason to freak out. The lightning storms in the distance are not a reason to freak out.

 

There is one thing that one can say about most NC thunderstorms, "Wait 20 Minutes" it will be gone. Generally cool after that as they usually approach in the late afternoon and evening.

 

 

[Mom2Scouts06]

SctDad the same can be said for weather in GA...if you don't like it wait 20 min and it will change

 

Our boys during their first year of Webelos Resident Camp had a thunderstorm EVERY night right around bedtime. If we cancelled camp every time a summer thunderstorm came up Scouts in GA would never get to have camp!

[Beavah]

For me...when it calls for wet...I get.

 

Yah, that's a hoot!

 

When yeh do some international scouting, yeh find all kinds of funny things. I love gettin' questions about why all the cars in da U.S. seem to explode a lot (from folks overseas watching our movies).

 

Now yeh might live somewhere that doesn't get many storms, so to you it looks like we have exploding cars. But for most of the U.S., electrical storms are just an ordinary camping trip in the summer months. Yeh stay alert, yeh choose sites intelligently, and then yeh just have fun.

 

If you're missing out on all that great summer camping, camping in the rain, the joy of watchin' a thunderstorm pass by... you're missing an awful lot of great Scouting.

 

Now what I really don't get is how da Californians can go campin' with all those Earthquakes and mudslides.

 

Beavah

 

[Scoutfish]

We get low rumbling thunder every day in the summer. You never see the lightning. Technically, they are one in the same, but we also get heat lightning..which is still lightning, but without any storms. The heat lightning usually occurs over the ocean around here.

 

Just saying from locale ( yeas, I meant locale, not local) experience....If just hearing thunder stops your program, then BSA might as well shut down from mid June to the beginning of Oct in NC.

 

 

[Eagle92]

I know growing up in SE Louisiana that every day from about 1P to 4P we would get thunder, and sometimes lightening. We would have rain or no rain with that. But as a Lifeguard, I always enjoyed that during the middle of the day as policy was the trapdoor pool closed, thus out of the 8 'guards on duty, only 2 had to actually do work while the thunder was being heard.

 

 

Agree with 'fish if we had to shut ops during thunder, shut down Scouting form May to Oct. in NC

[SctDad]

One of the great things about a NC storm in the Summer is that the rain is not freezing and boys like to play in ght rain.

 

As for watching storms pass, I remember watching storms when I was a camp staff member at Camp HInds in Maine. We would sit at the fence on the waterfront and watch the storm move in or across, and hope it would hit the tower on the other side of the lake. The tower would glow like an indiglo watch for about 20 seconds.

 

Yes Moxieman , you might know the spot I am talking about. It was after watching a storm move towards us that we decided it was probably not a good idea to sit at the base of the FLAGPOLES and watch the storm. LOL. This was in the mid 90's and of course things were different then. Guess we were the reason for the storm training.

[Engineer61]

Couple-o-Thoughts :

 

Growing up we always used an AM radio to detect lightning and tornadoes. Tuned it to the bottom of the AM band (no stations) and turned the volume up. Single "crackles" are lightning, constant static is from the electrostatic discharge from a tornado. My electromagnetics professor in college confirmed it worked.

 

Where I live now, if you get a thunderstorm coming in, you'll get 5,000 - 20,000 air-to-ground lightning strikes per hour across the line. And if you get the rain, you better make sure you camped off the wash line, or you find yourself in a flash flood.

 

At one car camp last fall, a T-storm rolled in during the camp setup...(there was only a 50% chance of scattered T-storms that day) one pop-up was destroyed before it even arrived at the site. Visibility went to 10-feet in the dry-line dust storm. I'm glad I wasn't there for it.

 

The good thing about it is there are no tornadoes here...the occasional micro-burst though.

 

 

 

[Engineer61]

On the humorous side....there is an old golfing joke that goes....

 

If you are caught on the course in a lightning storm, go out in the open away from trees and hold your 1-iron straight up over your head.

 

You will be completely safe as even God can't hit a 1-iron!

[TigerLisa]

Found your old thread, Anamaria...thanks for the tip.