RV Severe Weather Survival Guide
Ever found yourself wide-eyed as the sky turns a tumultuous gray, and your RV starts to rock with the rising wind? That's just another day in the life of full-time RV living in North Texas' tornado alley. In our latest episode, we're diving deep into the heart-pounding world of severe weather safety on wheels.
Join us as we share harrowing tales and sage advice for navigating Mother Nature's fiercest tantrums. From dodging tornadoes en route to Florida to anchoring down against relentless gusts, we've gathered a treasure trove of tips and tricks to keep you and your furry companions safe amidst the chaos.
Links:
Liquified Tank Treatments
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路 16oz Bottle - https://amzn.to/49KZIVe
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RV Severe Weather Survival Guide
Ever found yourself wide-eyed as the sky turns a tumultuous gray, and your RV starts to rock with the rising wind? That's just another day in the life of full-time RV living in North Texas' tornado alley. In our latest episode, we're diving deep into the heart-pounding world of severe weather safety on wheels.
Join us as we share harrowing tales and sage advice for navigating Mother Nature's fiercest tantrums. From dodging tornadoes en route to Florida to anchoring down against relentless gusts, we've gathered a treasure trove of tips and tricks to keep you and your furry companions safe amidst the chaos.
Links:
Liquified Tank Treatments
路 32oz Bottle - https://amzn.to/430ysj7
路 16oz Bottle - https://amzn.to/49KZIVe
路 Drop In Pods - https://amzn.to/3SZA0VT
For more Travel Videos check out our Main Channel
http://www.youtube.com/ @Millers_in_Motion
Follow Us on Social Media:
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/ @Millers_in_Motion
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/millers_in_motion/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/millersinmotion
馃帶 Tune into our RV Shenanigans Podcast for more on-the-road stories and laughs:
- Listen here: https://rvshenanigans.buzzsprout.com/
- Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/ @RVShenanigansPodcast
For More Featured Products visit https://www.millersinmotion.com/partners
馃寪 Visit Our Website:
http://www.millersinmotion.com
馃 For Business Inquiries & Collaborations, please reach out via email at: info@millersinmotion.com
Thanks for watching, and don鈥檛 forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for more adventures with the Millers!
Welcome back to the RV shenanigans podcast, brought to you by liquefied I'm Lauren, he's Ryan, and together we are Miller's emotion.
Speaker 1:A couple of years ago, we sold our ranch in Texas and now enjoy a new season of life in our Alliance Valor RV.
Speaker 2:And enjoying every second of it.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Even the parts that make you go. Why am I doing this?
Speaker 1:Like you're just testing the limits, testing your luck.
Speaker 2:Kind of like we did last night as my earplug fell out.
Speaker 1:That was not the worst thing that happened.
Speaker 2:It was not the worst thing that happened, but last night and the last few days we've been preparing for what didn't end up being as big of a deal, but it could have been a very big deal.
Speaker 1:And it was for other people in the line of that.
Speaker 2:It was. What we're talking about is severe weather. It is our main topic. We thought that this would be a good time, especially it is springtime. We are here in North Texas. It is one of those things that always kind of rears its ugly head, and when you're living in a sticks and bricks or a house or apartment or anything else besides a mobile home or an RV, it's fine. I mean, there's precautions, but it's fine. It's a lot different when you start talking about when you full-time in an RV and you happen to be in the path of one of these storms and there's a lot more that goes into severe weather. So before we dive too deep into it, let's take a quick break from our sponsors.
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Speaker 2:Liquified will help break down your black tank waste as well as help with those odors. In addition to helping with those odors, it's got an actually really great orange smell to it. So not only does it help break down those odors, it also helps freshen the bathroom. One of my favorite features is actually this easy measure pour spout. Because it's designed this way, you don't have to bring in other cups or measuring devices of any kind. Dump what you need in for your size tank, put the cap back on and you're done. To learn more about Liquified RV Black Tank Treatment, you can visit liquifiedrvcom. Do us a favor. Please support the brands that support us, because they enable us to be able to bring you the podcast and the regular videos. To purchase Liquified Black Tank Treatment, please see the link down below. All right, Severe weather. I mean, let's be honest, it makes my you know what pucker a little bit.
Speaker 1:That is true, and you are that person whenever it comes through, that you like to keep very close eyes on it.
Speaker 2:Well, OK, and I think that that's a little bit of a double edged sword for me, because even when we had the house or the ranch, I still did.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:But that's partially because it's really interesting to me, like how tornadoes can form out of literally Zippo and just kind of what goes into it. Out of literally Zippo and just kind of what goes into it. I've always been intrigued by the weather and so when it becomes severe I'm more into it because I'm just curious and then on top of that, obviously I would like to avoid damage to our belongings and ourselves. So let's start off by saying what constitutes severe weather.
Speaker 1:So to me that's anything that poses a risk to your health, your safety or, I guess even in this case, your physical belongings, like your house or car.
Speaker 2:Dogs.
Speaker 1:Or to dogs, of course.
Speaker 2:Who are way more important than any of our other stuff because they are little furry kids.
Speaker 1:And I do think it's important to note that this is coming from our perspective in North Texas. So yes, tornado, alley, all the things.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of that, it's. It's always interesting talking to people about severe weather because we are on the Southern side of tornado alley. Obviously we don't get hit quite as bad as like, say, most of Oklahoma and Southern Kansas, but we are in it.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And so every spring, inherently, if there's a squall line or a storm line that's coming through, there is a chance that there's tornadic activity and hail and all of those things in it.
Speaker 1:And we have had to hide in the bathtub with the mattress and the dogs we have.
Speaker 2:And I will say, too, that we've also lived in other areas of Texas and the country that experience other kinds of weather, and we're going to talk about everything. This is not just about tornadoes, this is about severe weather while living full time in an RV. If you are in a mobile home, that doesn't move. All of these things kind of apply, minus the one that I'm going to say is move, because if you're in a mobile home, that's a little different, but outside of that, then these things all will apply to you. So it's also important to note that we're going to kind of talk about two different aspects of severe weather and living in an RV. There's when you're down, you're stationary, essentially, or you're unhooked and you're camping, and the version where you're traveling, because I think you handle both of those a little differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure because I think you handle both of those a little differently, yeah for sure. And so when we talk about certain things, we're going to kind of give both ends of that spectrum of what we would do in both scenarios.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Let's start by the obvious. With any severe weather, the one common thing you get with all of that is pretty much rain and wind. So we're going to start with rain water.
Speaker 1:Essentially and obviously, water is an rv's worst friend worst nightmare and I mean rvs are meant to handle a little bit of rain. They are watertight too, you know. I mean you can't put them out on the lake but they, they should be they should be watertight and so just because it rains doesn't mean you have to go like put a jacket on your RV, like it should be able to handle a little bit of this. Do they make that?
Speaker 2:I'm really curious if they make like a dome or something you can like, wrap your RV.
Speaker 1:I'm sure they do. A turnabond is just really expensive.
Speaker 2:Right, and I think that's important to know. But when it comes to water, just know. That's why it's important to keep up with your monthly maintenance things like cleaning your slide seals, ensuring everything's working correctly. When it comes to that stuff, no-transcript to get caught in a bad spot where it's about to start pouring and you realize, oh, I was supposed to do that.
Speaker 2:And now, who knows? And so that's why we, no matter what, once a month I at least visually inspect things up on top of the roof. Now, once a quarter I'll actually get up there and walk around. I try not to get on our roof as a whole. I'm a bigger guy. It's just one of those safety things, not just for me but for our roof. Um, and so I visually will put our. We have a ladder that we can move around, uh, my telescoping ladder, and so I'll look at all that stuff and then we clean our slide seals once a quarter, sometimes more, if I feel like they need it.
Speaker 2:Um and that keeps everything nice and tight.
Speaker 1:And like checking the little gutters making sure they're not gunked up, and that water can, you know, get off as it needs to.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But you can get into a little bit of a pickle if you're getting more water than the average structure can handle. Sure, and we've actually had that happen before, where it's literally raining sideways or something like that Last night and it came in through like the kitchen vent, the max max air vent, because it was just coming in at an angle that you know it couldn't be prevented well, and I will say, like you're talking about max air vent covers, uh, we have a well cover, so you have the plastic cover that goes up and down when you turn it on but, then you can also get a secondary cover.
Speaker 2:That's more like a shroud that goes over the top of it. It's's kind of angled to the front of the RV. We happened to be in a position where the rain was driving from the back of the RV which it happens, and we did have the vent on for something and we noticed it was dripping. So now the rain sensor did kick in, but because it's in the front corner, it kind of gets shielded a little bit, and so we did have to turn off the vent for that reason. But, yeah, shielded a little bit, yeah, and so we did have to turn off the vent for for that reason. Um, but yeah, just know that even if you take a lot of precautions there, the whole point of severe weather is that it's abnormally.
Speaker 1:Then it's not like it's just a little rainstorm coming right we're talking about torrential downpours here, uh, or other factors that we'll get into in a second and, for example, last night, the squall line that came through dropped five inches of rain in some places in four to six hours, and so these are incredible amounts of precipitation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I will say that. You know, when you start talking about rain, the first thing that I think about a lot depending on how you're camping is are you on concrete or are you on grass? We've been on both during some storms, and I'll tell you that, obviously, if it's spring in texas, I will actively look for a concrete site over a, like a grass site or or a rock site or one of those types of things, just because, um, so much rain can fall in such a short amount of time and these rvs can be so heavy um, especially when you start talking like fifth wheels and drivables, they can get up there and wait that the ground could become so saturated that you actually sink.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Now we have snap pads on our rig, so it's less likely for us that it's going to happen versus if you just have the metal feet.
Speaker 1:Shout out to snap pads.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can save some money. There's a link, by the way. But we've and we've said we were in Gulfport doing some storms and we've said multiple times that the snap pad saved our tails. Yes, and we actually got to a point where we were so concerned we actually moved the RV.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's very sandy, loose-type soil. So, in addition to the grass, the slickness of that. So just pay attention to those sorts of little things that maybe you didn't think about until it was too late.
Speaker 2:Well, when you think severe weather, you instantly go to hurricanes, tornadoes, you go to very severe things, and the reality of it is that the water is one of the worst parts. Second worst part, in my opinion not to just move on from water, because it's going to be an underlying theme here is wind. Now, obviously, I'm talking about straight-line winds. At the moment we are going to talk about hurricanes, tornadoes, the more severe things. Those are all just technically wind, just condensed, but people don't take straight line winds seriously enough, I don't think.
Speaker 2:And in fact in our old coach we were getting ready to I don't know if we just got back from somewhere or we're getting ready to leave somewhere and I remember we were out with our neighbors and there was a storm coming in and it wasn't like too bad, like the news had hadn't played it up all that much. And I remember standing out there at the camera cause it's what we do, if we can film it and thinking, oh, I'll just get a quick little time-lapse of the storm clouds rolling in and then, before it starts raining, I'll pick the camera up and bring it in. So we had our nice what you're if you're watching this, you're on a nice sony camera and I stood out there and our neighbor came over and we were talking a little bit and literally as we did that, we heard like the tornado sirens. I know they're not technically tornado sirens. In north texas they're severe weather alert or alert or, yeah, like emergency response sirens. So they're meant to be like.
Speaker 1:Pay attention.
Speaker 2:Think back to that duck and cover, duck and cover. And so it's not necessarily just for a tornado, it's for anything. But the straight line winds were in so excess that they were causing damage, so they blew the sirens Right. Well, of course, immediately. Growing up in North Texas, everybody called them tornado sirens when we were kids, because that's the only time they used the dang things, and tornado sirens when we were kids because that's the only time they used the dang things. And so now you hear them, you're like, oh crap.
Speaker 1:It's a tornado.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but in North Texas they've used them for hailstorms because it was so large. There's an event in Fort Worth called Mayfest, every year Coming up, and so, oh no, it's not, it's past, it's April.
Speaker 1:No, it's coming up. No, it's coming up.
Speaker 2:And it seems to get hit with bad weather all the time and they've done it a couple times where they have golf ball and baseball size hail hitting and there's people at an outdoors event.
Speaker 1:I would love to go to Mayfest. This is something I've wanted to go to, but I refuse to go to it because of how terrible the weather tends to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it doesn't happen all the time, but let's weather more than they have. Good, it's true, and it's outdoors, so that that that started to hit and you start to realize that how much wind can affect an rv, whether now this is one of those big ones when you're driving or when you're not driving. Um, I'll tell you that I don't know that I have a line, necessarily when we're towing um, but I, if I can feel the wind pushing the rv around and I don't feel like I could control it, and and if you drive a fifth wheel or a travel trail, you kind of know what I'm talking about, where you feel the RV trying to push the butt of your truck um, out of the way. And we have a dually.
Speaker 1:And so I tell you that my line's a little deeper than if you have like.
Speaker 2:Feel the wind push the trailer and it's pulling your butt over it, you should probably consider stopping Right. And then that's going to be one of those where try when you do stop. If you do stop, try to point the nose of the RV into the wind.
Speaker 1:That's what I was going to say. Is there also be a different line depending on the direction you're traveling versus the direction the wind is? But on the straight line winds, something to consider is that it's not often reported on those news articles. They'll report rotations and tornadoes, but they just kind of glaze over some of those straight line winds. They're hard to measure, they're hard to pinpoint where they are and they don't really come with a pattern in the same way.
Speaker 2:Well and you can get a gust Like they might a lot some news like they're starting to do a better job of that here in north texas, where they'll say like, oh, we're gonna get 25 straight line winds with gusts up to 60 miles an hour, 80 miles an hour, whatever those gusts happen, because you never know, when you get one of those outflows from a storm, it just right is like this big exhale of air that just hits you right on the side, yeah and so.
Speaker 2:But even that, like knowing so, when you're towing, obviously there's the whole, you know, like if you're driving into it, if you have to pull over, try and point your nose into it as best you can just. And now, the reason why I say that is because rvs are designed to go down the road. They're designed to go down the road at 65 ish miles an hour and so it can take the wind a little better if you point into it, because that's the more aerodynamic side of the rv, versus, again, if you're in a big fifth wheeler class, a drivable, the side of it becomes a sail. So if you're not moving and you are at a campground, obviously you don't have as much of a say in the direction of your rig pointing. Um, we've had sites that we point directly northwest, which is in north texas, the sweet spot. Every area has storms that have a tendency to come from a certain direction. It always seems to be the northwest or west here in Texas. So we got lucky there. We are pointed a little southwest where we are now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we could feel that wind yesterday, so when it was a straight south or north wind. It's broadsiding us Now. If it's coming from the west it's a little bit better because it's hitting along the RV the correct way which the storm cells have a tendency. So we're kind of in that okay, kind of when the storms come through, we're okay, but when it's just straight line winds out of the south, it's less than desirable. But there's some tips and tricks you can do around there. Like we're due for a tank dump right now. I didn't do it. It's not that we like it's not overflowing by any means.
Speaker 1:Let us reassure you of that Shout out to.
Speaker 2:Liquified, keeping that stuff juicy.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Oh sorry, but it's not like we never wait until it's too late to dump our black tank because of reasons like that of water has some weight to it. In fact, I actually put water in our freshwater tank just to give us a little bit more weight. Class A motorhomes don't have a lot.
Speaker 2:I mean, you guys are pretty heavy to begin with, because your GWWs are way up there, especially if you're in a diesel pusher. But in a fifth wheel, I mean, we can be lighter and the winds can affect us because we sit up a little higher, and so using the tanks to kind of help anchor you is a good idea, and so that's one of the things that I did the other day. Just knowing that we were going to be having storms coming through, I put about half of a tank of fresh water on board, ended up adding almost 1,000 pounds of weight to us.
Speaker 1:You sure, was it liters or gallons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have a little. It's called Save-A-Drip. It's a little water like you put it at the end of your water hose and it tracks how much water is going through and apparently it was in liters and it confused the crap out of me and I thought we were burning through water so fast. But that's just a quick little tip. When it comes to straight line winds and all those things, obviously, when it comes to winds, to pick up your stuff outside oh, yes, yes, don't leave your camping chairs out.
Speaker 2:And if you have a lighter grill or a lighter table I mean if it can handle it go for it. Um, and then there's the obvious awnings.
Speaker 1:Oh, dear goodness, the awnings.
Speaker 2:Just if there's ever a doubt in your mind, put your awning in. Like, don't, like, and I get. Some people will put those shades that extend all the way to the ground and then they'll tie them down to give a little more rigidity. I don't see, like I get, why people do that, but if you know there are storms coming in, just pull them in.
Speaker 1:How about this little rule of thumb as far as awnings? Can you tell this is a soapbox moment for us. Treat them like small children. If you can't see them, don't leave them out. That's my two cents.
Speaker 2:Assuming you like your kids, I'm assuming these people like their kids.
Speaker 1:So, yes, if you can't see them, don't leave them outside. And also, if there's a potential for bad things to happen, like bad weather, don't leave your small children or your awnings out.
Speaker 2:So it's. I mean, I can even tell you, like when we got up this morning, there's an RV over here that their awnings all messed up, yeah, and so we've seen it several times.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's almost inevitable and it's really like, especially in full-timer parks where the weather is normally good, like Texas in spring, is kind of one of those default. That not putting it out as a whole, because you never know pop-up storms and they're bad, severe supercells. Here it's not like it's a little bit of rain hit us, like Florida in the summer they always seem to get that one to three o'clock quick little shower that takes five seconds.
Speaker 1:That is not what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:No, these are severe weather things that come out of nowhere. I mean, you kind of know they're coming, but you don't at the end of the day, and so, yeah, just know that's a big thing, kind of. Next, and if you notice, we're going in order of kind of severity here lightning Okay. So lightning is one of those things that I feel like people either could care less about it or are so terrified of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm category A.
Speaker 2:I am too. I mean, I care, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to go play golf in it.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:But it's also one of those things that it's I don't know how to describe it. I just it is what it is. I mean, I have to know that our RVs are made correctly to where I mean, obviously, if it gets hit by lightning, you're in trouble.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, we're not going to be outside playing in the lightning, by any means. We're going to be inside where you're supposed to be, but we're not going to overthink the lightning, I guess it is what it is.
Speaker 2:It is what it is. I guess it is what it is. It is what it is and it's inherently a sign to me more than anything else, as the lightning picks up, that's typically going to be involved with severe weather. So as you start to hear thunder, it's more of a Ooh, don't take dogs out real quick, um, and get them back in before the weather really gets here too bad. Um, typically in an RV park, you're not going to be the tallest thing in that park, because most RV parks have trees buildings.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm looking at like six power poles just out the window, past the camera yeah, flagpole yeah, there's flagpoles, the, the building here is two stories because it's an old farmhouse there's a gazebo over here that looks like it's about five feet taller than us, with a weather vane on top, and so those, inherently, are going to be more likely to get struck by lightning versus your and we don't have some of those I guess you can call them accoutrement.
Speaker 1:We don't have like a flagpole or a big satellite pole or some of those other things on our rv so maybe that's one of the reasons that we also take a little bit, a little bit more lackadaisical about it, because we know we don't have some of the risk factors like those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that brings up. Brings up a good point too when you're talking about bringing stuff in. You know if you've got like we've left our Starlink out and some pretty severe stuff and that's been okay, but if you have something extended really high up like a flagpole or anything along those lines, that's probably worth saying you know, whether it's lightning or wind at that point probably worth, you know, bringing those in with everything else.
Speaker 1:If you wouldn't put your awnings out, would you put the flag out, that kind of thing? Well, and I kind of feel like this might be a good time to mention this goes across several of these different topics. But where you're choosing to park, are you in an open space or are you under a tree, and how does that kind of play into all these things?
Speaker 2:assuming you have options right. Sometimes in rv parks it's it's all treat or it's all open like. But the park we're in right now is kind of 50 50 um. Now we're weeks away from one of the most exciting upgrades that I've been waiting for for so long. But I can tell you when that solar system goes on shocker, it's solar um. I would much rather be out in the sun than under a tree, and I know that's kind of counter intuitive in the summer in texas, because trees also provide shade um. Trees also drop crap on your rv so it's hard like branches well, branches, sap, I mean, you name it and so it's.
Speaker 2:It's one of those double-edged swords. But you know, even here, like we plan on using our solar system to limit how much electricity you use, because we're paying for our electricity in the site we're currently in. Now if we're not paying for electricity, it's just part of it, I don't care, but you do have to pay attention to hey, that tree branch is really close. If the wind picks up, is it going to shove back into me?
Speaker 2:right is lightning going to hit that tree and cause it to fall on me? Um, I know, like the hanks had a video, way back when they were smaller, that the weather picked up and I don't know if it was lightning or wind, but a tree branch fell on half of their RV and I mean they had to get a new roof.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it caused them some damage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, just like Lauren said, you have to pay attention to where you're putting your RV. Yeah, now, before we dive too into the really severe stuff like cause, on my notes here it says more severe weather Cause. This is all like. Again, we're not talking about your run of the mill, there's thunderstorms that run through. We are talking about more extreme versions of that. So when you move up from that kind of what, there's not much of a difference in a severe version and a regular version, because they all have lightning, they'll have a little bit of wind, they all have rain. But now we're talking about tornadoes, hurricanes, um, I'm going to say winter conditions, hail, that kind of stuff. It's, it's just another level of severe, um, and I will say that if you are a full timer, that is, stationary, this little brief boat I'm going to talk about probably doesn't apply, because you don, if you regularly move your RV and you know something really bad's coming and you've got enough time and notice to get out of the way.
Speaker 1:Right, this is not like a 20-minute heads up for a tornado. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:This is like there's a hurricane coming in three days and I'm in South Florida. Yeah, you know what? I think it's time to go north slash west or east.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:Like, let's head out of here and just get out of the way of it right now. If you know, like, if you're traveling and you know that there's a line of tornadoes that's going to come through, just go or stop either one, like, but just adjust your travels to accommodate. That happened to us recently when we were headed to florida for the super show and rv unplug production and all that. There was a string of storms that was supposed to hit the south around the pensacola Florida, mobile, alabama area Ended up having an RV park down there get hit with a pretty bad tornado Took out most of the RVs in that park. I think one person died in it, which it's a miracle no more did. But we had built our travel plans. We were actually shooting the video if you want to see. It was our Harvest Host Challenge mega fail, which really wasn't a fail.
Speaker 2:It just we chose to change because of weather, um, but we sped up to get out of the way of the storms.
Speaker 1:We knew we were going to get ringed on, we were just trying to avoid the severe stuff right, which we did, um, because the the storms were actually going to move from west to east and then kind of turn up north a little bit, and we needed to go west to east and then turn south, and so if we could stay ahead of it and then make our turn, it put us in the best situation so that's exactly what we did, and so if you are traveling or have the ability to move your rv, obviously the best thing you do is just get out of the way of the storms.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're talking about more like kind of pop-up stuff that you don't have the time for, like I'm going to say, hail and tornadoes, sometimes you can't do that. I'll be real honest when it comes to hail, not a lot you can do.
Speaker 1:No, even the weather. People can't really predict it sometimes when they're talking about the storm, so it's hard to say where it's going to hit the hardest and the patterns.
Speaker 2:Right, so moving may not be an option there, because I would say if you're close enough to the storm that you're thinking about moving and you can see it coming on a radar, you're probably too late.
Speaker 1:Yeah, can I just throw this out there. If it's hailing, don't go outside. That is not the time to hook up and move, please don't.
Speaker 2:What if you have a football helmet? No, Denied.
Speaker 1:If it is hailing, please don't go outside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because there's a big difference in kind of the mushy pea-sized hail and golf ball to baseball size. I mean a baseball-sized hail could kill you if it hit you in the right spot.
Speaker 1:It could, and then it could do some damage to your truck, your tow vehicle. So many things.
Speaker 2:We have the hail damage on our trucks to prove that we've been through this. Lauren's, for some reason, got hit a lot harder than mine, which is crazy. They're next to each other.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And that's just how random it kind of is. Like I got a couple of little hail dens in mine and Lauren's got pelted, pelted, but so did the RV. And I will say that you know, a lot of times with RVs when you have like a flexible PVC roof, like we do, that, then a hail, stone is going to hit it or debris, and it's going to penetrate it a lot easier. And so with a PVC roof it's less likely. Don't get me wrong, they have their perks and their downsides as well. But you know not, that's part of it. Like we got hit with some pretty good hailstones in a couple of storms ago in our brand new RV and I don't know how we didn't have any hail damage.
Speaker 1:We're talking golf ball size and egg size.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we didn't have any damage, thank God. And just know, if you do go through a hailstorm, when it's safe to go back outside and the roof is walkable, you need to go check your roof Because there's not a lot of precautions but you do have a lot of plastic things up there. People forget about a lot, like your ac shrouds. Those are all plastic. Your skylights are plastic. Typically they're going to be double walled, so you should be okay.
Speaker 2:Just know you don't want to roll too much with one broken one and the inside one not um, and then you also want to check your seals. That was one thing that somebody told me once that where their front cap came over to their roof line, you normally have a run of like that. Where their front cap came over to their roof line, you normally have a run of like Dicor self-leveling sealant and or a turnabonte, and the hailstones hit a screw head so hard it broke that, and so now they had a leak point up there. And so just know, like you need to go inspect your roof after storms because you never know what could potentially happen while that's coming through. Now, as far as like precautionary stuff for hail, again there's not a lot you can really do. I mean, I guess you could kind of tarp some things if you want, like we throw tarps over our bikes if it's going to rain and they're outside.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not really going to stop the hail necessarily. I think it's just don't go outside and it would be my number one and then check for damage as soon as you safely can afterwards Right, as soon as you safely can afterwards.
Speaker 2:Right, and just know there's a statute of limitations on filing claims for hail damage on those types of things, whether it be your RV or your vehicles. So just whatever your laws and rules are in the state you reside in or use as a domicile if you're a full-timer, I will say, when it comes to tornadoes, this is one of those ones where I'd put as much water in all my tanks as I possibly could if I knew there was going to be like a really high chance of some tornadoes. If the tornadoes on the ground coming for you too late, don't worry about that. I mean, again, it's about prioritizing, right, and I think that's the biggest thing when it comes to severe weather. It's all about prioritizing.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:If you can prepare a little bit like we knew that these storms were going to be coming and they had a very high potential of being severe last night, so I prepped the day before right you know, we pulled in chairs, we covered the bikes and tied stuff down, put things in the truck versus sitting out, and then I put water in the tanks to weigh us down a little bit better. I purposely didn't do our black tank dump that kind of stuff, closed our gray tanks because, again, just any any little bit extra weight can help out in that scenario. And now today I'm going to go clean it all up. When it comes to tornadoes, I think the biggest thing to understand is and this is coming from Texas residents I remember when we first moved into our house we didn't have weather alert alarms out there and the only thing I could find was Twitter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a blonde moment for me big time, because when our first few I guess storms would roll through I was like man, this is crazy, the sirens never go off, regardless of what's going on outside. And then one of our neighbors was like it's because we're rural we don't have sirens.
Speaker 2:What are these sirens you're talking about?
Speaker 1:We've been in the city the whole time and we're used to just having the sirens, and so that just kind of skipped my mind.
Speaker 2:Well, and then the if you ever seen the movie twister, that like it's still one of the most eerie things. When you get like it's calm it's always calm before the storm, right, there's a reason why people say that and you get these storms that roll through and the sky kind of turns green, and then you get the weather thing doing that little emergency broadcast, that little meh meh thing. It's still one of the most eerie things to me to kind of experience that. But you know, that's another side of it is like you know, how do you know when this stuff's coming? Let's say you don't have good internet where you're at or you don't have the ability to watch TV. So there's plenty of ways.
Speaker 1:One thing that I would recommend is you can get a weather radio right they even have crank chargers on some of them so that you can charge them up, and it is just a weather radio it is, and in order to use those efficiently, you need to know where you are and some of your surroundings, because they'll name like cities and counties, and so you need to know the direct general direction based on that information.
Speaker 2:So a little bit of awareness now also also assuming that you have power to your coach, and I say one 10 power, or you have 12 volt TVs, like we happen to have in our Alliance Valor. Just know, like one of the things I always do to someone else's possible annoyance is I like to scan the TVs on the antennas, no matter what, just to make sure we get local channels. And a lot of that reason is especially if there's going to be bad weather, because that will allow us to find a local news station, because they're always going to bleep in for the most part if the weather gets severe, ie there's tornadoes, there's something else going on and so if you do lose, like if you happen to have a satellite dish or your internet goes down or whatever, you can use that as a backup system. Now it's not as reliable because if you lose power for some reason and all your TVs are 110 versus 12 volt, that could be a problem.
Speaker 1:And just kind of a caveat here, remember if you're using Starlink for your internet, that is satellite-based and when the storm clouds roll in, it is unlikely that's going to work very well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's a 50, 50 with starlink, it depends on your clarity of the sky. So like if you already have a little bit of obstruction with your view it's, it's going to get rough. Um, if you've got a really open, clear sky, you may continue connection. Just no electronics. Especially there's a lot of lightning that will interrupt it as well it also messes with wi-fi.
Speaker 2:Sometimes that's all electronic wave signals and like when you pushing electricity through the sky while you have all these things going on it will disrupt it. Have you ever noticed that your internet gets a little bad when you turn your microwave on in your rv?
Speaker 2:no okay, well, it does. It can happen depending on where you are, like if you're for us, our kitchens in the middle. So if we were in the bedroom and our internet's in the back and we turn the microwave on, it gets a little worse up front. While the microwave's on, it's because it's just interrupting the signals because of the, the microwave waves. That's why they're called that um, the more you know um. So, moving into kind of any other precautions, you know, if you know severe weather's coming and I'm not going to say we know every spot in every rp work we've ever been to like where to take shelter- but, if I know that severe weather is coming, I'll find out, so, like if we watch the weather.
Speaker 2:Like, the park we're in right now is a full-timer park that we keep coming back to, so we know where to go for this one, I think it's the office.
Speaker 2:Right, it's the office okay, most of the time it's the office or like a laundry room or potentially a comfort station if it's a bigger park, that kind of stuff. You know, if we were somewhere else for like a long weekend with other people and then there was a chance of severe weather, I'm probably going to stop by the office, go through the materials they gave us, whatever find out where the tornado shelters are. There's actually a law in Texas that you're required to have a tornado shelter. Now, it can be the inside room of a house. It just has to be something. Um, some places take that to extreme and they've got, you know, dugout basements and legitimate storm shelters because, again, tornado alley. Um, so just know that. You know that might not be a law in every state, especially if you get out east that's not like the chances of tornadoes aren't as high and like out west, and so they may not have that law, but here in texas they do.
Speaker 2:Um, don't wait till it's too late to abandon your rv that's a good point um, we're probably a little guilty of this in some scenarios some of us more than others, yeah some of us just keep working out.
Speaker 2:um, with those straight line winds, there were tornadoes that we were talking about back. When we were talking about straight-line winds, that same storm system there were people that were going to the shelters. In fact, the guy I was talking to, him and his wife and the two dogs went down there. We chose not to because I well, you really chose not to. I was on the fence, but once the wind started to calm down, I was okay again because I knew there weren't a lot of tornadoes in our area. It was just a straight line winds, and so once those kind of blew through, we were okay.
Speaker 1:Well, and knowing the direction we were pointed, the direction the winds were coming from, just how we were barricaded, in reduced our risk and then in watching the TV we could confirm that there weren't actual tornadic activity in our area and some of those things, so that factored into my decision.
Speaker 2:So the other side of that too is, I will say, that the park lost power, and a lot of times with severe weather you lose power. So shout out to Todd Henson and Big Beard Batteries, because that coach still had our solar system on it. We didn't know. We lost power because everybody else did and because we had Victron components which shocker. We're going to go back with Victron components on the Valor. It automatically just switched over, so you have one little like power hiccup, but everything kept working, so Lauren kept working out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was doing a workout in the living room. Well, every other coach had lost power because the pedestals had all gone dark. Now that park had a bad habit of going dark kind of quickly because there's one power source that liked to get hit by trees a lot. And so that you know, I would say that if you can afford a solar system, even as a backup, you know there is some advantage to having being able to operate off grid in some capacity. Now, is it a requirement? No, I mean you got to want to also be off-grid, like I wouldn't get it just because of a potential storm. But it's one of those fun perks, if you do have it because you off-grid, is that you do have that automatic switch over if you have the right components to be able to do that and to kind of have a backup system. And that's one thing I've noticed with RVing that we always like to have is a is a redundancy built in?
Speaker 1:we really do, and I think it's not just us and our comfort, it's also the dogs, right, remember?
Speaker 1:and so if the power goes out for one instance, it was out for three days, yeah, um, and so it wasn't a very climate controlled outside day, so we really it was hot, it was muggy and it was hot, and so it wasn't just us, you know, going to a hotel or doing whatever, and they had no estimated time for when the power would come back on. So being able to produce our own power in a way really allowed us to stay home and function well.
Speaker 2:Well, and when we switched to the Valor, we actually went with a generator on board as well. And even this past trip I said well, I'm getting low on regular fuel for the generator, I'm going to stop. Buc-ee's is easy, so we're really big. We can't get into every gas station to get regular fuel. Our generator runs on regular gasoline and we can only get diesel fuel through the truck lanes with our TSD card, so I have to kind of pick and choose.
Speaker 2:Now, once we get fuel for back there, I'm good for a long time because we don't use it as often. Yeah, and when we don't have the solar system, we've been using it when we like boondock or cracker dock or those types of things in transit. So we actually will have two different redundancies built in now, because once the solar system goes on, that'll initially take over, and if that were to run low for some reason, we could fire the generator up and then charge the batteries. That way, for now we just have the generator, and so one of those storms went through right after we got the new rig and we actually ran the generator for almost two and a half days straight, which is not the most ideal way to break in a generator, not going to lie. Luckily we had broken it a little bit, just not as much as I'd wanted.
Speaker 2:Desperate times, times, desperate measures, right and I will say that I did a very extensive oil change, clean up all that stuff after, because we did run some of that oil a little longer than we should have, by about five or six hours. So so, yeah, that's. You know, when you talk about tornadoes and and redundancy and systems and all that stuff, just know that you don't wait too long to get out of the RV. With that being said, we don't keep a whole lot of very important documents on board. Don't get me wrong. It's our home. We still have some things that are very important that we use every day, like our passports, because we travel.
Speaker 1:Well, let's announce that.
Speaker 2:Well, but okay. But I think it's naive to say we live in here, and not that we don't have important documents. Now, we don't have all of our important documents here, just the things we actually need on a day-to-day basis. So like our marriage certificate, as an example, that's at the house, right, right, so that's in storage. Here we use things that we actually need every once in a while and if we don't need it and it's important it goes.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's something that they teach you. Hey, when you live in tornado alley is what to grab if you have to leave quickly, because you do need certain things, if you're if the chance that you may not actually come back to your home or there's too much damage to get back and I say legitimately need like.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest, some people would consider a camera not a big need it. It is literally my job to document, and so if our camera were to get destroyed, we'd have to stop doing a channel until we could replace the camera. Would we replace the camera? Of course we would, but now that's two or three weeks of not having videos.
Speaker 1:Insurance would.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what I mean. We would probably pay for it and get reimbursed by insurance to move that process along. But even my computer is a good example by insurance to move that process along. But, like, even my computer is a good example, like so many you know, documents for the business are on this computer, um, now I will say that I use a uh, we have an account with apple, so we have apple the iCloud storage thingy, um, and so we do have password protected some of that backed up there, um, which is nice, because now I know that if my computer go to complete crap, we do have some things backed up to that.
Speaker 2:But the first things I would grab is my. We have a bin, not a bin, but you have your little file thingy, besides the dogs and some food for them. We grab that. I would throw my computer in my camera bag and I'd grab that, and that's really it. I can live without everything else. The rest of it's just clothes and PS5s and TVs and Apple TVs and things that can all be replaced, that I don't want to be destroyed, but at the end of the day, it's way better than anybody getting hurt.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So just safety wins, and that's, I guess, what I'm trying to say, and that kind of goes for hurricanes too. We lived in Galveston for a while.
Speaker 1:We did. But if you're in one of these dangerous areas, have yourself like a plan what you would grab if you needed to, because if you never think about it and then you're in that situation, the panic's going to overtake and you won't be able to think so ahead of time, have a plan Right On to hurricanes, so Right under hurricanes, so with hurricanes.
Speaker 2:We lived in Galveston for a little while. Lauren went to University of Texas Medical Branch on Galveston Island, so we lived in that area and so we. It's funny and I understand now, like when people come to North Texas and like they're calling for tornadoes in 12 days, like it is Texas in spring, that forecast is going to change 73 times in 12 days, like I'm not worried about I'm worried about tomorrow. After that we'll see.
Speaker 1:And they may not even know what's happening tomorrow exactly.
Speaker 2:No, that's more of an educated guess, and so it's like the RV Unplugged rally. Like they were calling for some pretty severe weather and I got, so I run all of the rally and in-person stuff for RV Unplugged.
Speaker 2:Two weeks ahead of time what are we going to do in the case of weather? I'm like worry about it when weather becomes relevant, and I got so many emails and I ended up just having a canned response. I think we actually just sent one out to everybody because I was getting so many of them and I just said listen, it's Texas. In the spring, this stuff changes quite frequently. They could be saying this now and literally it's sunny the whole time, and so we will judge the weather. The event was rain or shine. Just know we're not putting anybody in danger. We do have weather contingency plans. These are all built into events.
Speaker 1:And you had an emergency plan if there had been a? Tornado.
Speaker 2:Yes, we did, and so we had ways of communicating with everybody, and it's like just everybody take a break, let stress lose for a second. It's going to change, it's going to change.
Speaker 1:It's going to change so many times. So that actually happened here yesterday where we are. They'd planned like live music and having food trucks come in for the evening and everything, and they got worried because the weather was supposed to be so bad in the afternoon that they canceled everything.
Speaker 2:Hey guess what happens.
Speaker 1:It never rained until 3 am. Yeah, there you go, and so that's what we're meaning is yes, they may know something's coming, but they may not know exactly the time, and you have to allow some flexibility.
Speaker 2:Well, when you talk about like, if you're from more Texas, you know exactly what we're talking about. It's not those pop-up Florida showers from 1 to 3 as everything heats that just kind of pours for a second and then goes away and you're back in the sunshine 10 minutes later. I mean these things some go fast, some go slow. It depends on how much Gulf moisture there are, it depends on how much that low trough coming out of the Colorado area is. I mean, there's so many factors in these things. Like yesterday is a great example. Because they thought this thing would fire up and then it would slide down and it would hit it. Literally sat on top of Wichita Falls, what felt like for 8 hours.
Speaker 1:They got pounded yesterday.
Speaker 2:I don't know how much rain they got, but there were tornadoes up there, I mean literally just right over there, but because our high pressure cap didn't lift quite as much. Look at my weather knowledge. I just paid attention to the news yesterday. That's all it was, because it didn't. It literally kept the storms up there because of it and then it finally broke down overnight and then they picked up their speed that they were supposed to have the whole time and raced through.
Speaker 1:Right. But those poor people in Wichita Falls, they weren't expecting that to just camp out on them either. So just as much as our plan changed, so did theirs.
Speaker 2:Right, because they thought it'd run through and they'd have the evening. Yeah, they did not, they did not, and so, whether it's bad or good, just know that weather is a very fickle, fickle thing, that, as good as the science has gotten, there's still no way to officially predict tornadoes. All they can do is predict the potential for tornadoes.
Speaker 2:We started this by talking about hurricanes, I know, but hurricanes are a little bit easier to predict, so I was using that as an example. Gotcha, when hurricanes come and they kind of know, like back in Africa, like there could be a hurricane in two and a half weeks, right, and that's why, like, if you're an rv and you get caught in a hurricane, I don't, like I'm sorry, but move like I've. I've seen them predict hurricanes two and a half weeks out because of low pressure coming off of africa. It's like, hey, this is going to come this way and the way the jet streams all go and the models all fixuate, like florida may have some problems with this one, and so, like you can start making a plan then and I know the plans again, like they may aim for one place and miss it by a little bit, but just get out so well the way that's one of those things too, like a tornado.
Speaker 2:the chances of getting hit by a tornado is really low, simply because they're not typically not very big. Yes, there are some that can be very big. Hurricanes are hundreds of miles large, so they don't like the eyewall can move 20 to 50 miles, like in a day. Like oh, we could be down here, but oh, it hit 60 miles up. This way, when it comes to tornadoes, that's not the same thing Like trying to avoid a tornado with that mentality is literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack like what's it not going to hit who knows?
Speaker 1:because literally wind could shift it that way real quick and hit a house, as you say you have probably a better chance of winning the lottery than predicting where exactly it's going to hit well, in a lot of places they'll say like you'll see all this devastation like in a neighborhood, and then there's like one street of houses that looks like nothing's happened except they have debris in their front yard.
Speaker 1:You're like the crap that happened to us at the ranch, because we saw on the news that there was a tornado coming and we saw, like the tornado chasers and everything sitting on the bridge and it was just. It was really kind of terrifying we thought we were right. We thought we were in for it and we literally watched the tornado skip up over our neighborhood and land on the one directly north of us, and so it hit before us, it hit after us and it did not hit ours.
Speaker 2:Praise Jesus, yes, thank you very much.
Speaker 2:And so that's but that's like with hurricanes they can get more intense and less intense, but that range is it's such a slow change. With tornadoes it's a very fast, quick, agile change, if that makes makes sense. It's kind of like the difference in driving a sports car in an rv and it's not like hurricanes can be devastating. Don't get me wrong, but I feel like if you get stuck in a hurricane with an rv, it is your own fault to a point cruise ship versus a jet ski kind of.
Speaker 1:That's another great example.
Speaker 2:You haven't noticed we got cruises on the mind. So, yeah, when it comes to a hurricane, just know like, if they're forecasting one to hit like the Gulf side of Florida, have a plan like, hey, if this gets a little more serious, what's our drop dead day? When do we have to leave by, like, give yourself a couple of days and say, hey, listen, if this does, in fact, stay on the path that they're projecting, we need to leave. This time. Let's try to get here knowing that some other people are probably going to be doing the same thing, so build extra time into it and extra resources, and extra resources.
Speaker 2:And your patient's pants, that too, and just have a plan to get out. And if you can afford to get out early, get out early, just do it. Why not? I know when we were living in Galveston we had one or two hurricane threats and I had to train my brain to work with a hurricane because, just like the gut, it doesn't get hit as much as Florida, nowhere near as much as Florida, but the Texas Gulf Coast can get hit. I mean, new Orleans was Katrina and then the Gulf Coast Ike hit the year before, two years before that we moved down there and so.
Speaker 2:And then they got a big one right afterwards too right, and so we had to kind of train ourselves like we always had. I called it the go bin because this was a little different. We didn't have an rv back then. We were moved, lived there, and so it was one of those things. We took all our stuff and then we just kept like we didn't take. I say we took all of our stuff. We didn't take like wedding pictures that we hang on the wall and all that because we moved so frequently. We did leave that in storage up in North Texas, but we still took all of our documents for things and we kind of kept everything in little. I called it the go bin and if it ever got to that point we're going to throw all the stuff in the back of the truck and we're going to get our asses up to North Texas.
Speaker 2:I have a bleep button over there, and so it's one of those deals that just pay attention to the weather a little bit, especially if you know it's hurricane season, if you know it's spring in Texas and Oklahoma it's tornado season.
Speaker 2:Even if you're just crossing around, a lot of people don't hang out in this area in spring because of the weather. Right, it is volatile and it can be aggressive at times, and so a lot of people will stay on the east coast or they'll bolt over to the west coast in the spring and even if you're just coming across, just know there's a chance and so, and that I think that goes to like pay attention to the weather in your area, even if you're only going to be there for a night, like you don't want to get stuck at a cracker barrel and a tornado pop up, like that's like the worst case scenario. Only oh, I say that only because there's no normalcy to it You're probably still hooked up or in your you know you have your tote hooked up if you're in a drivable, that kind of stuff. So I think that comes back to just be prepared at all times.
Speaker 1:It does At all times it does and this is a little bit of another soapbox moment for me when people talk about severe weather and they're like I'll be fine. Okay, that's cool, you might be, and the greatest chance actually probably is that you yourself will be fine, but you may need resources, and now that's going to require somebody else, and then, on the off chance that you are not in fact fine, you're putting somebody else's life in danger, having to come get you.
Speaker 1:So, yes, we want you to be safe, but also remember who you're impacting if it goes to hell in a handbag.
Speaker 2:I thought it was a handbasket.
Speaker 1:I'm a woman, it's a handbag.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's comforting for my pocketbook and that's exactly right. So just have an understanding whether it's just kind of driving through A couple of things that we use in that process. We mentioned a weather radio. We're bad, we don't actually have one. So do as we say, not as we do. I say that because I think you can get away with not having a weather radio if you have a good understanding of what's coming, because I enjoy understanding what's happening. I have a pretty good idea of what's going on I have a weather radio.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's right here, um, but we also know that we've got power systems to where we can run our tvs and and other redundancy things that cost a lot more than a weather radio. Just know that the weather radio is the old, trusty thing and so if you have a concern, just go get one. They're not that expensive. You can get them for like $40. I know Midland makes a really good one that's battery-powered, that lasts a long time.
Speaker 1:And while you're there, pick up a good flashlight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was going to say a good flashlight. We have one really good flashlight plus some other headlamps and some little rechargeable stuff that we use Any sort of a power redundancy system. If you want to take that extra step, obviously you can do that. One thing we didn't talk about a whole lot was what if winter weather were to pop up.
Speaker 1:Well, the good news about that is again, usually it's kind of like the hurricanes, where it's somewhat predicted and so they're going to say, oh, we're going to have a cold front moving through, there's a chance of precipitation and whatnot. So I would take kind of a similar thing that if you think that's coming for you and there's a chance of like wintry precip or something, trying to get out of the way if it's reasonable. We've been caught in some winter storms before um, because it just wasn't reasonable for us to move, and I'll say the rv handled it pretty well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again one of those be prepared situations. If you haven't noticed, we have a theme going here with weather. If you know that it could get cold, make sure your propane's topped off and you're not running with the last five gallons in your second bottle, kind of a situation.
Speaker 1:Hey, maybe even you purchased an extra one just to swap out on the off chance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good point, purchased an extra one just to swap out on the off chance. Yeah, that's a good point. A lot of feed stores um like tractor supplies those things. They sell empty tanks and then they also have fill stations, so you could go buy another one and have it.
Speaker 2:So if you are in an area where you can't be like, let's say, you're wintering up somewhere and they don't have a propane fill, you could buy another tank now. If you're wintering in the north in the winter, you probably already have a plan hopefully, hopefully, yeah, you're not just winging it.
Speaker 2:But you're exactly right and as part of that, just be prepared situation. And if a winter storm were to pop up on you, because they can like in the spring, right now, like it snowed in Colorado yesterday Right, it is April 28th. I know that they're at higher elevation, I get it and the roads are treated and it's a little bit different, still unusual. If you think there's ice on the ground, the last thing I would ever do is tow an RV.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness. Yes, I barely want to drive in it. The stairs alone, when they get iced over, are treacherous.
Speaker 2:Ask my butt.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, it is so much worse than you think it is.
Speaker 2:They're elevated over in a heartbeat. And, yeah, they also are treacherous if you leave a speaker, that's a cylinder and you've had too much whiskey.
Speaker 1:We are talking about weather, not poor choices this could be weather related, could be um but in the weather, in the winter weather, some people will actually put skirting around the rvs because they're being prepared, they're trying to trap some of that heat. Um, a couple things. We have the tank Right and so our tanks aren't going to be as likely to freeze, but remember some of your pipes and things may still be exposed disconnecting your water supply? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And all the things that you would go into with winter camping apply in a very short, quick time span, and so just know, you have to kind of be able to pivot if that could happen.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We're not trying to discount winter emergencies, weather emergencies and those types of things. Just know that it's not as like. I don't consider a blizzard as much of a severe weather thing. It is and it can be, don't get me wrong, but I'm looking for the things that could actually come in and blow the RV over.
Speaker 1:Right, I was going to say I don't think that the winter weather we've experienced is anywhere near blizzard-worthy. I think it's been Texas snowstorm worthy.
Speaker 2:We also actively avoid cold weather if we can help it, and that's the beauty of full timing.
Speaker 2:If you are, I mean, we do come back to Texas, especially around the holidays.
Speaker 2:We will always be here, more than likely from Thanksgiving through Christmas, and then New Year's is a bit of a wild card every year, but there's always a chance of the cold weather when that hits. And then, depending on you know, we've been in Florida the last January and February for a couple now, or at least most of January, and so you know that's the beauty of full-timing you can kind of avoid some of these things. So if you're a full-timer, that's on the road a lot, just learn the weather patterns of the country, like it's not, like it's just that easy, well, but like okay. So you know, if you're going to go to Florida in August, july and August, I have a shocking truth for you this could be hot and humid, I know, I know, I know world news here. If you're coming to Texas, oklahoma, kansas, tornado alley in the spring, guess what what? There's going to be severe weather, and so, whether you get it or when you don't, that's a little bit more spotty.
Speaker 1:But just be aware of the weather in the area you're going to and then learn and develop the things you need to develop in the moment so I don't know if you remember this, but I think it was the hanks that went to alaska and they got a tsunami warning while they were there. That's something I didn't know. I didn't you know I hadn't processed that. Of course I'd thought about the cold and some other things. I hadn't really thought about the risk of a tsunami in Alaska.
Speaker 2:I remember them kind of panicking over it too.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And then they went into the campground office after they drove around for a little bit and they're like, yeah, that happens a lot.
Speaker 1:Right, right, I'm like oh, so maybe actually talking to some of the locals might give you a little bit of perspective or information that you can't get off of the web.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's a big reason why we like to talk about tornadoes and kind of supercells and Tornado Alley. So much is because that's our local weather, and you can always tell too Of all the emails I got. I got one email from a fellow Texxan that was like hey, is there a weather redundancy plan? Yes, okay, thank you. It's just funny because they understand, kind of, what they've signed up for, if that makes sense and so, um, yeah, I know that's a lot, and it's one of those things that I feel like it should be talked about every spring, because it should, especially when you live in no-transcript.
Speaker 2:Well, and we do appreciate our loyal followers, because you guys have probably heard us talk about weather on the main channel. This is the first time on the podcast that we've talked about it a little bit more in depth. Just know that these are some of those topics that we're probably going to talk about one way or another every spring. And I say that because the 7,000 of you that follow us may have heard it, but the next 4,000 may not have, or the next person may not have and if this information can get across to one person and help them avoid a potential catastrophe because if this were to be destroyed, that's a catastrophe to me.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's literally our home getting sucked up by a tornado or whatever, and god forbid us, or one of the animals or something important being here when it happened. Um, that's, our ultimate goal with this channel is not just to entertain and to give tips of travel.
Speaker 1:Are you getting an edutainment?
Speaker 2:I don't like that term, but it's. It is one of those things that it's it's important. It is one of those things that it's it's important.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:And so we do appreciate it. If you're one of the guys that have been around forever and you listen to this whole thing, we appreciate it. If you're watching this on YouTube, please give us your best weather tips. Down below we are working on a new way I don't think you know this to interact with you guys through the podcast. We are incredibly thankful. The podcast has gotten big quickly, a lot of it because of the main YouTube channel.
Speaker 2:But, with that being said, just know we are going to have to make some changes here pretty soon to some logistical things because of the podcast size, and so one of those that is coming and you can look for it here pretty soon is that the podcast is about to have its own YouTube channel.
Speaker 2:It's all grown up. It's graduated, I think is the term we're putting in our social media posts, but it is going to have its own YouTube channel. So one of the big asks that we're going to have on the main videos here pretty soon is if you're also listening to the podcast, please go over there. One thing that you start to learn with YouTube and all the social media stuff is analytics are king and unfortunately, because even though it's similar content, it's structured very, very differently.
Speaker 1:It is, and we kind of have two different audiences in a matter of speaking. There's some crossover, but we really do.
Speaker 2:And that's been. The problem actually is because a lot of our videos have been squished pretty badly, because YouTube has no clue what we're trying to do right now and so we are going to leave the main channel the way it is. The Sunday Saturday sorry, the Saturday video is not going anywhere. It's going to be on the Miller's Emotions channel and then the RV Shenanigans from Miller's Emotion channel will be the podcast and a little bit more RV deep dive travel stuff and all of that. So just know that that's coming. But in doing that we're also coming up with some new ways. I really want to get to a point where I can have a voicemail, to where you guys can actually ask us questions. We'll play it on air and then we'll come back and answer it and have a conversation. So, yeah, that's just know that there's a lot of things in the works for that. So anything else on severe weather you can think of.
Speaker 1:Not that I can think of.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Thank you guys, so much for watching. Hopefully you got some information out of this that is helpful and or useful, and I guess the best thing to say is stay safe and stay dry.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Thank you guys, so much for watching, slash, listening and we'll catch you next week. You.