Did You Ride the Storm Out?

We stayed in a hotel and woke up to the weather radio alert at 3:00am on Friday morning. It said to expect expect 70 mph winds, frequent lightening and very heavy rainfall. I was praying that nothing terrible would happen to you guys. I didn't hear very much about how everybody got through it. What the hell happened out there?

[Dgold at An Honest Tune]

It rained once, Thursday night, however it didn't spoil the festival for me at all.

[soydeLawrence]

i was in my car for that and my nerves were completely shot haha i can admit that. i couldnt sleep, with the lightning being so close and the thunder so loud

[el jota]

about 4 am friday morning we were enjoying a good conversation revolving around the lightning storm and the winds started picking up. i hadn't staked my tent down because the weather had been pretty calm during the day when i set it up and of course i forgot that when the cold front was rolling in. so i look over and see my tent lift up and start rolling across the field. i point it out to my friends and run after it. by the time i got to it the winds had picked up substantially and it started pouring.

within ten seconds i was completely soaked from a horizontal rain that was carried by at least 40 mph winds if not more. by the time i break my tent down and start dragging it back to the campsite i look over and my buddy's expensive and sturdy canopy tent collapses. we look at each other in an illuminated lightning landscape and he has this worried look on his face like for sure there is a tornado coming through. at that point i'm trying to tie my tent to a tree getting blasted by the rains and an eery calmness comes over me. i was thinkin this would be an alright way to die. my buddy got me to his rv and i dryed out and went to sleep in my truck when the winds subsided.

here's to good times all the time.

[icculus723]

we for got to stake down one side of the rain fly so half my tent got drenched.. the thunder scared the crap out of me .. around 6 am i just took some sleeping pills and went into my car...
great weekend though

[yondermtnpanic]

Stuck this one out...Left STS9 balls to the wall, and crawled into my tent. Around 4:30, I all of a sudden felt like buckets of water were being poured on me, and discoverd that our rain fly was halfway across the park...never got that one back...Anyway, WELL WORTH IT! GREAT FESTIVAL!

[kinderkitti]

The storm woke me and i was watching it thru the screen. Then even though we had staked our tent the side by our heads pulled up out of the ground. I\"m lying on my back with myarms over my head holding it down and when i yell sh***************t my tentmate finally wakes up to help! she was sleeping thru it! We felt like we were rewarded by mother nature the rest of the weekend.

[Metalhead]

When the storm started we didn't even have all our vendor tent up yet.... I was trying to put up the sides and stuff when the rain really started...at about 4:30 a.m. or so I was in the tent holding the table with all our dry supplies on it with one hand... holding one side of our tent down with the other... standing in 1- 2 inches of rain... the rain was blowing all the way through and I was soaked within minutes.... lots of fun!!! :lol:

[tnkrbellup]

Yep, we rode it out also! I woke up around 3 am to visist nature, my friend woke a little after to do the same. Good thing too :wink: Went back to sleep for a bit, then woke to the tent leaking. We quickly gathered sleeping bags & pillows, & tried to sleep in the back of his tarp covered truck, at this point the winds started up, then it began to pour. At one time we both thought it was over, but it picked back up with lots of energy! We sat in the back of his truck for 30 minutes or so watching the storm. It was incredible! Scary, but amazing. At one point, we could still hear the music going & were really suprised they were still playing. The lightening was amazing & VERY close to the east of where we were camped (Camp Cletus). We saw quite a few people run through the downpour & to reach their camps after the show ended. Rather frigthening due to the lightening! We retreated to the car around 5....barely slept and got up around 6 to get the day started & the camp fixed up. The tent was fine, stayed where we put it, but wet. The back of the truck had been fixed up with a tarp covering for shade, which needed to be fixed. Otherwise we held up pretty well. A little wet, but nothing bad. Then we got to go through another rainy, windy morning early Monday! But we were ready for that one :P . Waka Waka

[JNEMUSIC]

Haha, that storm was frickin intense. I really didn't think my canopy and tarps rig was gonna hold out - it was shaking like crazy and bowed quite a bit. I got up when it started getting real strong and threw bricks over all my tarp steaks getting completely soaked in a matter of seconds and we got in the truck and hoped things wouldn't blow away:) my friends tent who wasn't there yet was blown into my canopy with snapped poles and I stuffed it under the back of the truck and was able to repair it later. That **** was wild. I was worried about folks with less secure accomidations. The lightning was all over us and definitely caused a scare. Other than that we were able to stay high and dry:)

[KUfiredancer]

we rode it out in the tent. i have lived in kansas all my life and have never been outside in a storm like that. we were in the upgraded camping area but our campsite backed up to an open field, so the wind whipped through there hard enough to have our tent completely flat with us inside of it. we were staked down and had 2 people inside it so we werent going anywhere, but it was insanely intense. i knew that as long as it kept raining there wouldnt be a tornado, so i knew we would come out alright. my brothers tent didnt fair so well with the aluminum poles, one of them snapped in half and they had to run for the car after that. hope everyone came out alright.

[TomThumbs]

We went up to STS9, forgetting to close one tent window and when we got backm after running through the rainm our tent was soaked. We were close to the trees, so that helped, but sleeping in my car sucked!

That was the craziest storm I've ever been outside in!! It did cross my mind if we were going to survive for just a second! But ya know what dude, that made one HELL of a memory! :D

[KestrelP]

Someone from the KC Star took my picture on Thursday as I was waterproofing my tent (Showed up in Saturday's paper! Cool!) - this was officially the best idea of my life (the waterproofing, that is, not getting my picture taken). We stayed pretty dry Thursday night, but that lightning! Whoa. How can you be blinded if you're eyes are already closed? When I woke up in the morning I was half-surprised our new tent was still standing. One of our neighbours had had enough, though. Said he was packing it in and going home to Ohio. This was Friday morning! If that guy really left, he missed some incredible shows!

[kinderkitti]

And mother nature rewarded us with great weather after the storm.

I'm SOO THANKFUL I bought a new tent this year!! The people at Mountain Hardware make one hell of a tent (hammerhead). I've had the tent out for two events 1) Summercamp 2) Wakarusa. Both times I stayed high & dry...

[JustBob]

We were in the big top watching STS9 when the storm hit. The band said they were asked to stop playing for everyones safety. We put on some ponchos and started walking. The wind almost ripped the ponchos off. My cousin then paid some guy in a golf cart $40 to give us a ride to our tent. He had no idea our site was 1 1/2 from the concert field, but he drove us anyway.

My drunk ass left the windows open on the tent so I had to go in and get them shut. My cousin sat in the car calling all his friends to tell them good bye. I was trying to get the tent shut and the wind was crushing it on top of me. 6 foot tall tent was made into 1 foot at times. I had one tent pole break, one bend at the metal where the poles link, and another snapped later in the weekend. All in my new tent. What a storm, and Coleman better give me some new poles.

We slept in the car cold and wet. Woke up at 6am, got in the tent, got things dry and went back to sleep. Tent never leaked, just rain came in the window I left open.

What a great storm and what a way to start the weekend. WakaWakaWaka

Bob

[kinderkitti]

Having met your cousin, the picture of him in the car making his last calls is perfect. ;)

[JustBob]

Hes like a party in a can. I love to bring him to anything I go to. Even when he thinks hes going to die, he can't help being funny(while trying to be scared).

[One Busy Munkee]

http://www.6newslawrence.com/stories/2004/jun/18/wakarusa/

That storm was crazy!!! I've never been outside in a rainstorm like that. Lightning like strobe lights. Some chick and I were sleeping in a small dome tent when that storm came rollin through. We had an EZup (vendor tent) and I opened our tent to see if the EZup was still there. The wind was blowing like a mofo but the tent was still standing with the side tarps flapping like crazy. My tentmate said lets put that thing down, so we jumped out during the worst of the storm and there under the EZup, HOLDING IT DOWN is my buddy Fraz. He was behind the flapping tarps, screaming at the top of his lungs for some help. We were 10 feet away and couldn't hear him. It was like a hurricane movie, we just focused on securing the EZup, secured some other things and got back in the nice dry tent. Then Fraz asked, Where's the blue tent? The ol blue tent was flat as a pancake. Had to give Fraz a good camper award the next morning for Holding It Down. Hahaha

In another tent in our camp the quote was, \"It's OK, it's going to hold...It's OK, it's going to hold\" Then someone else runs in the tent, \"IT'S GONNA GO, RUNNNNNN!!!\" Hahahaha, just crazy! A metal pole did end up breaking. Turned out to be fun in the end.

[SaraJuana]

I thought Thurs was the last nite of my life!!!!! At least that is what hubby lead me to believe. He wakes me up when the waters started rollin in sideways. He had been up watchin the storm with our neighbors. He wakes me telling me we have to run to the bathroom, or shelter as he puts it. Being from OK all I can think of is there is a tornado coming. He tells me to put my shoes on and throws a poncho at me. I cant find my shoes so I run in socks. I dont put the poncho on either. We start running towards the shelter, which happens to put us running into the rain. I am trying to book it, but the wind is knocking the breath out of me, making me even more scared. Then a gust of wind knocks me about six feet back, and I am calling my husbands name but he does not hear me. This is really scary at this point. Finally he looks back and sees me and pulls me, weighting me so I dont blow away like Dorothy. We finally get to the bathroom and get in the hot shower for around and hour. After that we are standing under the dryers NAKED drying our clothes for bout 45 mins. Little after we got dressed a friend of Just Bob's cousin (whew, what a description!) came in and I talked with her for a bit. (BTW Bob, she told me the specifics on how she met your cousin!)

Oh, and for those who dont recall, Hubby and I rode our Harley down. We did not have a vehicle to climb into. We had a mosquito tent we parked our bike in, but it blew away.

If I would have known there wasnt a tornado, I would have went back to sleep. I am alive now, and I got to meet a bunch of great ppl and see some great music, no love lost.

[JustBob]

Late night in the bathrooms, I missed out! Reanna was the girl and she was my friend I met on Hip Forums the same way I met a lot of you. Eric was the guy with her, they are old friends from Michigan.

Thursday night was the first time we met in person and they didn't know my crazy cousin at all. If you heard about the $40 golf cart ride back to camp in the storm, then you understand why he is my CRAZY cousin Corey.

We were parked in the car next to them before they went to the bathrooms. They called and Reanna had to use the little girls room, so they drove up. If I knew it was a party up there I would have followed. I sat in the car trying to get some sleep, as my cousin sat next to me calling all his friends telling them goodbye. It was all very funny the next day.

It was great to meet you up there, and funny that we ended up across the street from eachother. Also, I don't think any of us got your mans name? Maybe I was drinking too much to remember.

Bob

I ate two chocolates at the beginning of STS9 ? Needless to say, that was probably the sacriest and most memorable moment of my entire life. I thought for sure a tornado was gonna kill us.

But when the sun came out the next mornig it ende up being an awesome fest

[csbosox]

Yeah that was crazy. My tent (northface) held up fine and my buddy's tent ($30 target) held up fine as well, both tents stayed put and didn't let in rain. But my canopy, not staked down, didn't. I woke up, looked out my window, saw the canopy fly over my buddy's tent and up against his car, so I got out of my tent ASAP and woke him up, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers, he didn't know what the hell was going on. I got him up and we tried to wrestle the 10x10 canopy away from his truck. The canopy was F*CKED UP! The metal was all bent and broken, so I put it up against my truck so it wouldn't fly away and went back to bed. One problem though. I left my rain fly unzipped while I was messing with the canopy, so there was some rain in my tent, not to mention that I got back in the tent soaked to the bone. But I got back to sleep alright. The sun dried the campground the next morning, but not before some idiot tried to drive his way out of the mud in his Firebird. I took the canopy back to SuperTarget and got a replacement (I told them that the metal was defective). My cell phone got really wet and so it was the lone causualty of the night. I have lived in KS near all my life and I have never been outside in a storm like that, the wind was driving that rain and the lightning was intense. I was in Camp Krusty and the KC Star and Lawrence Journal World both had pictures of my campsite, the LJW one was a aerial picture. Besides the rain, the weather was great. It was cool enough at night and in the mornings, that I could sleep in. Can't wait for Waka2005!

[JustBob]

Just went to the place I bought my tent from today. They said I could bring back the one with the broken polls, and pick up a new one. Rock on!

Just in time, now I have a camping and music party to hit Saturday.

Bob

[TeamB]

After walking back from STS9 during the lightning storm (I had already resigned myself to the idea that if I got struck by lightning then it was meant to be) and remaining relatively dry, several of us situated ourselves under a huge tarp that we had set up earlier in the day. As the winds picked up, one of the support poles got blown over so I substituted my arm. I'm holding on to this wildly flapping tarp when all of a sudden a gust of wind knocks me and my friend off of our feet and into someone's tent. I look around and see at least three tents blowing over. I jump up (already soaked after about 5 seconds) and end up running in the wrong direction. I finally get under our other canopy which held up quite nicely. It was absolutely nuts I tell ya.