Category: Newbie Tips

We have been pretty lucky on this trip; someone must be watching out for us. Although we had planned the route to stay out of severe weather, Mother Nature sometimes likes to throw a curve ball.

In Colorado, we had a crazy rain/hail storm, but we didn’t have any damage. There was some flash flooding on the streets, and I was very glad we were in a truck that sat higher up. We also had haze from the wildfires. It caused my asthma to flare up, but we were pretty far away from it. As we drove to Utah, we saw the smoke in the distance, with Highway warning signs of fires in the area, and we saw the burned hillsides along the road. It is amazing that just two months after we were in Estes and Rocky Mountain National Park, it was on fire.

In Utah, we had a night of very strong winds and had to look up how to prepare the RV for wind storms: fill the fresh water tank for weight, bring in your slides. It was a very noisy night and the campground was absolutely covered in leaves the next day. It looked like a blanket of green snow.

Before we even left Ohio, we had to reroute our original route because the Yosemite area had wildfires. We had some smoke haze while in San Diego, California for a few days as well.

Most of the western part of our trip was under a fire ban. Some places allowed a propane fire, while others did not.

In a house, you don’t think too much about the pipes when it gets close to freezing. You make sure your garden hose is disconnected and if it is a crazy cold night, maybe you let your faucets drip. It can get a little dicey in an RV. We had heard stories of pipes freezing and breaking, even with a slow drip of water. The water connections are above ground, which can cause them to freeze faster. The hoses are generally on the ground as well, which can make them freeze. We had been really hoping to avoid freezing weather, but weather is unpredictable and we had a couple of “rare” nights where it got to 32℉ or below. We wrapped the water hose in a foam pipe insulation or sometimes just unhooked it for the night. We didn’t want to buy the heated water hoses, as they are quite expensive and we were hoping to not have too many freezing nights. Most of the time, we could just use the electric fireplace for heat on for cooler nights, but freezing nights we ran the propane furnace. It kept us warm, as well as kept the tanks and pipes from freezing (our RV underbelly is enclosed and is warmed by the hot air ducts). I always left the bathroom fan cracked open for fresh air and ventilation when we used the propane furnace. Our RV carries two 20-gallon tanks and we carry an extra as well. I try to use the electric fireplace as much as possible, since we also use propane for the oven/stove and water heater. We have run into propane shortages around the country on our travels, including Texas where we had been a month and half before the winter storm hit the state.

All of this was doable with a little planning. Until, we made it to South Carolina/Georgia where we recently had the scariest weather we have run into so far. Tornadoes. Growing up in Ohio, tornado sirens are something every kid is familiar with. We have drills in school, everyone knows to go to the basement or an interior room, and to do it quickly if the siren is going off. While scrolling through Facebook, someone posted about a tornado watch for parts of Georgia and South Carolina for the next day. This had not popped up on my weather apps, not even on my paid alert. I downloaded a few more free, but highly recommended apps, and sure enough we were smack dab in the alert zone. Normally, we would say move if bad weather was coming as we see that as a benefit to having a house on wheels. However, the alert went from Florida up to part of Virginia, and was coming from the West. There was no good direction to go.

I had gotten too complacent and had not asked the campground about emergency weather shelter. When I called the office, the campground didn’t even know a storm was coming. The office told me that they would not go into their buildings for a tornado because they were old and she didn’t know how safe they were. What!? Twenty minutes later, they were going around to the RV’s telling people a storm was expected tomorrow afternoon/night. We decided to pack up our papers, electronics, and things we couldn’t replace, and to stay in a hotel for the night. We choose a historic building in Savannah to stay in. (Thank you COVID stimulus money.) Using the logic that a building that was 100 years old has managed the test of time. We filled the fresh water and grey tanks, closed the slides, turned off the propane/water/electric, and taped a note in each room that we were at a hotel and left our contact numbers. We left a little after lunch to make sure we could get the truck parked in a garage and be in the hotel by the time the storm hit.

The sirens did go off while we were at the hotel and we stayed in the bathroom for 45 minutes. Luckily our bathroom was as big as the living room in the RV. The tornado ended up being just some rain and thunder, both at the campground and the hotel, for which I am very grateful.

We got very lucky. It’s something we don’t think about most of the time, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure you have a good weather app or radio, and to ask your campground about a weather shelter.

Our weather apps currently consist of: Storm Shield (paid), Red Cross Emergency, Red Cross Tornado, NOAA Weather (the free version, it’s ok,), and Code Red (I find this one to have the most glitches and doesn’t seem to work 99% of the time).

What are your favorite weather apps on the road?