Chasing Adventure

The mountain wave, that is.

I BRIEFLY mentioned the unique weather here on the side of Mt. Tabor, but we had another HUGE weather event and Greg has done a lot more research that we wanted to share.

What is a mountain wave?

That’s a great question. A mountain wave is when wind hits a mountain range exactly perpendicular and dives down the bottom side accelerating with gravity and compressed dry air. Think of waves on the beach – this is not one massive wave, but a series of waves beating down the mountain like waves beat the shore, for hours. From our short amount of experience and the 2 events that have happened while we’ve been here, it’s been overnight.

Camp Creek Elementary School is 1.5 miles away from us and has a weather station there that we can tap into. During the storm last week, we saw gusts go from 20 mph to 60+mph and back in moments. We are located on the NE side of a SW to NE orientated range of mountains. So when a strong SSE wind develops, we get the mountain waves on the backside.

Greg did some research (no shock there) and found an 8-year long study that spanned the west-facing TN ridge and foothills that cataloged these wave events. In this study, there was 32 70+mph mountain wave events. The peak locations were #1 – Cove Mountain (Gaitlinburg, TN) and #2 – Camp Creek (us). The highest wind gust recorded at Camp Creek Elementary was 123mph. Greg said this was especially astonishing considering it was a non-thunderstorm produced wind gust. Mountain waves occur in dry air environment, so there is no rain or even clouds.

Just CRAZY wind.

Another incredible fact is that if you go 2 miles from the ridge, the wind diminishes greatly. It’s literally just the mountain side. And where are we? You guessed it, the mountain side.

We went outside during this last storm since we thought something hit the camper (Maverick was fine), and it felt similar to trying to wind walk during a hurricane. Gusts would whip through between the campers and I couldn’t even stay on my feet.

Monday, we knew the weather was coming (thank you, Greg) and warned all our neighbors to batten down the hatches. Greg found an article about RVs in high winds events (whew) and so we tried some new tactics so that we didn’t teeter as much. We hooked up Pearl and put some weight on her to help anchor us, kept the jacks on the ground, and pulled all the slides in. We gusted up to 112.7mph that night, just after 1AM, and the difference in how much the camper shook was immense enough that we are definitely going that route again.

Of course we couldn’t sleep during this, so when we heard something VERY loud crash outside, we hurriedly put an extra layer of clothes on to head out an investigate. We checked all over Maverick, but nothing had hit him (thankfully). Greg had walked almost into the street, but the dirt was blowing so hard, he didn’t go much further. About 30 minutes later, he got a call from our next-door neighbor about a flipped camper.

Oh. My. Goodness.

We knew that camper, 3 up from ours, and the sweet family that lived there! The Mom had the foresight to bring both boys from the bunkhouse in the back to their bedroom in the front, which allowed the boys to not get hurt. They were able to escape from the emergency exit window, since their door now opened to the sky.

Looking back at the weather gusts map, at 12:23am, when we heard the loud crash, a gust of wind came through at 102.7mph, and got under their camper with enough force to tip it over.

Upon further conversation and observation (yes, the family came out unharmed, PTL), it was determined it was a perfect storm event – literally and figuratively. Their camper only has slide-outs on the NW side – opposite of the wind, so when the wind pushed, there was already a heavier side the help the wind push the camper over. When Mom moved the kids for their safety, they put more weight in that NW corner, also helping the wind. Finally, the rig was high up, and not enough stabilizers used to counter-balance the weight issue, or wind blockers to stop the wind from going under the camper. If Greg wasn’t such an incredible researcher and didn’t have such a love of weather, that could have been us. The family is also new to this lifestyle, and are learning some hard lessons I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

The next morning, it took a regular tow truck and a heavy duty tow truck working in tandem to pull the rig back over. The jacks were all shot, lots of broke things inside, but within 2 days, the family was living back in the rig and getting on with life. Talk about resiliency!!

We are expecting another event this week, and we are praying all wheels stay on the ground for all our neighbors! Depending on the expected gusts, we might hook up and pull the slides in – just in case.

~Katie (with Greg dictating the technical stuff)