One helluva storm... - Hi-Lo camper travel trailer forum

davidc · 05-12-2013, 08:21 AM

Friday was not a good nite for us here in Von Ormy...

First the dark clouds, then the train coming, then the hail...

The first is the bed of my truck when it stopped.
Second is the side of my trailer the next day with most of the leaves from the tree next to it.
Third my dog after a rough nite - finally she can rest

I lost two of my vents - pulverized from the hail. My A/C cover is trash, along with the fins for the evap.

And my roof is covered with "slashes" from the hail.

The roads were covered with leaves, many trees broke or were just plain uprooted, three poles snapped off about half way up on the road into where I'm staying, so no power, finally got is back yesterday about 4pm.

Mine fared better than others - busted windows and siding that looks like a golf ball now.

It pulverized most peoples sewer hoses - word to the wise, spend the extra cash for the ones that you can stand on and they bounce back... mine was fine.

hilltool · 05-12-2013, 12:22 PM

So much for living "down South". Glad you and that sweet looking dog are ok.

Rick

JackandJanet · 05-12-2013, 01:38 PM

Even gentle storms in a trailer are loud. I bet yours was deafening. Glad you survived it and it sounds like the damage will be mostly repairable, except maybe for the dents in sheet metal.

- Jack

davidc · 05-12-2013, 07:59 PM

Thanks, but mine doesn't have sheet metal, it's all fiberglass... I was actually talking about one of the others in the park.

You know when you go through an automatic car wash how the water looks when the jets go by... it was worse than that.

And as far as living "down south" is there are really no trees to block wind, so it just builds up speed with nothing to slow it down... so even a 25mph seems like a hurricane.

Reported winds were suposed to hit 90mph... don't think it was that high, but close I'm sure.

And yeah my little rescue is a sweetheart of a dog.

jcurtis95 · 05-12-2013, 11:59 PM

David C,

We got hit by that storm before it made it to San Antonio. A tornado was spotted just 3-miles from our home. We had just returned from a trip to Oklahoma and unloaded our trailer Wednesday. I was going to put the HiLo in the RV garage but had not had time; instead I put our Ford truck in there.

Our house had a new roof replaced two years ago and is now going to get another. I will be surprised if our HiLo is not totaled. It definitely will need a new roof, all vents, and the AC cover has several holes the size of softballs in it. The antenna was battered out of shape and the tube on our awning has large dents in it. Some consolation, the roof repairs I did two years ago held very well and the only water in the RV was through the shattered roof penetrations.

Our yard has 31 live oaks and hardly a leaf remains on the trees. I hate to think of the long summer ahead with no foliage. Two blocks away a young boy found a hail stone the size of a grape fruit! The pits on our roof look as if pelted with soft balls. Our neighbors lost all their sky lights, vents, and turbines. They were in Colorado so my son-in-law and I had to clear out their flooded garage and place catch pans under their sky lights. Our sky light was of safety glass and was unharmed.

We await the insurance adjuster that is coming Tuesday.

Jerry Curtis
2406 T

davidc · 05-13-2013, 06:21 AM

Yeah, this storm was bad... started in the San Angelo area and probably farther out than that. Our hail was that size also... no grapefruit sized hail thank god, but what we did get was bad enough. I suspect mine wasn't as bad as it could have been due to the tree that was between it and the brunt of the storm. Your roof sounds like what happened to mine, not the "ping" mark of the hail hitting it, but the slicing of the hail skating across it. Most "ping" marks are on the sides of vehicles, not so much on the tops.

Yeah, I'm curious what the trees will do... go dormant for the rest of the year? It's just now spring... might as well go live in New Mexico or back to Phoenix with no real trees. Given that we have been in droubt conditions for ~3 years now, I don't think the trees will survive this. Trees all over this area are loosing limbs and some are just falling over due to the root systems dying.

I guess what surprises me the most was no weather alert... I get stupid amber alerts about old people gone missing from Dallas and Houston all the time, but NOTHING about this storm - the one with the potential for tornadoes gets nothing.

A minute and a half blurp on the news, I suspect deaply because it didn't hit San Antonio.

davidc · 05-13-2013, 06:30 AM

Oh and in the "For What It's Worth" category... I just started using the awning de-flappers (2 large and 4 small) and they worked great... I used 2 small pieces of 2x4 between the bottom awning mouts and the side of my trailer. 2 dog screw in anchors and 2 rachet straps.

The thinking was if the wind picked up while I was at work, at least when I came back the awning wouldn't be in the next space over or laying across the roof.

It worked, just the material didn't survive the hail... I was going to replace it, just not this soon... oh well, plans change.