A: Don’t fool with mother nature. That’s the first rule. Always be aware of your surroundings, be aware of the weather, and lastly, don’t ever think that just because today is a beautiful 70-degree day, tomorrow won’t be tornadoes, and wind storms, and hail. You have to prepare for the worst at all times.

What that means as far as tents go is to do proper staking, to make sure that your tent tops are tight, that any loose fabric is battened down, make sure that when you leave the tent site and the tent is installed that everything is secure as if there was a major storm on the horizon.

A: Wind can be a friend of a tent guy and it can be an enemy of a tent guy. On the enemy side of it, the wind will do a lot of destruction.
Our industry has been blessed with a lot of studies regarding wind and we’ve come to the conclusion that right around 38 miles an hour is when you want to discontinue the use of a tent.
That doesn’t mean that the tent’s going to blow down at 38 miles an hour but it gets you into a safe haven before the wind blows so the phrase that is commonly used it’s not how hard the wind blows, it’s what the wind blows that you need to be aware of.

A: As the wind hits a tent, it will do different things, sidewall on or sidewall off. The safest thing for the integrity of the attempt is to let the wind blow through. In other words, take the sidewall off.
You can imagine if you have tables set up with china, and linens, and floral, that’s probably not too practical so the second option is to make sure that everything is tight and that the sidewall is tight to the ground that it can’t flap. That way it’ll allow the wind to hit the sidewall and go up over the tent. But in prolonged wind storms, if you can’t take the tent down or abandon the tent – sidewall off, let the wind blow through.