Car camping, rain and storms

Postpone if

Read the forecast for the site before you load the car. This page does not fetch weather. If the forecast you already have says the night is a warning, the trip moves.

• Postpone if a severe thunderstorm warning, a flash flood warning, a tornado watch or warning, or a high-wind warning covers the site.
• Postpone if the campground closes, evacuates, or tells you the road will not be there in the morning.
• Postpone if the only pad is in a wash, a dry creek, or the bottom of a slope and heavy rain is in that forecast.
• A watch that is not yet a warning still means a leave-now plan: car packed, nose out, nobody depending on the tent.
• Wind you would not want to stand in is wind that takes a family tent. The fly is for rain. It is not a sail you get to test.

Site and drainage

Water goes to the low spot. A pad that looks flat at noon can be the pond by midnight. Pick the high side, then put the car where you can leave without crossing the lowest ground.

• Walk the pad. Look for silt, flattened grass, and the line of leaves where water has already stopped.
• Pitch on the high side. The picnic table sitting in a bowl does not make the bowl a site.
• Point the car out, on ground that still looks firm if the gravel turns to mud.
• Face the door so the walk to the car is not through the lowest part of the pad.
• Do not dig a trench. Most sites forbid it, and a trench does not fix a bad pad.

Rainfly, tarp, and guy lines

The fly goes on all the way: seams over the tent, no mesh showing on the weather side, corners staked before you unpack the bed. A tarp is the porch, pitched so water dumps away from the tent, not onto the fly. There is no tarp in this catalog, so use one you already trust. If the wind is in the warning, skip the tarp and keep the fly low and staked.

• Stake at an angle away from the tent, hook near the ground. In mud, a pulled stake gets moved, replaced with a longer one, or swapped for a buried stick or rock.
• Guy the corners before the wind arrives. Check them again after the fabric gets wet. Nylon stretches.
• Do not crank the lines so hard the fly touches the inner tent. That path is how rain and condensation both hit the bag.
• A ridge line to the car or between trees is enough. The low edge points away from the tent. A tarp that can become a sail comes down before the gust does.
• If you only finish one job before dark: fly on, staked, door usable. The rest can wait.

A dry sleep zone

The bag is the last thing out of the car and the first thing back in if the floor is wet. Pitch in the rain if you have to. Do it without the bed on the ground beside you.

• A groundsheet stays smaller than the floor, or tucked under it. A sheet that sticks out becomes a funnel.
• Pad under the bag. Wet ground steals more heat than the air does.
• Sleep clothes live in their own dry sack, separate from the clothes you pitched in.
• A small towel at the door. You do not climb into the bag in the clothes that just got rained on.
• In the morning, pack the bag before you take the fly down.

Condensation

Warm people under a rain-cooled fly make water on the walls even when the tent is not leaking. A drip under a seam, with dry mesh, is often the inside of the tent raining on you.

• Leave a vent open on the lee side. A sealed tent wets the bag from the inside.
• Keep the bag and the pad off the walls. Touching the fly is how a dry night ends damp.
• Wipe the walls in the morning before you roll the bag into them.
• If you can split the sacks, the wet fly does not ride home against the inner tent. Spread both when you are back.

Wet-gear quarantine

• Shoes stop at the door. The vestibule or a bin in the car is the mud room.
• Jackets hang in the car or under the tarp, not over the sleeping bag.
• The clothes you pitched in stay in a wet sack. They do not join the sleep sack “for a minute”.
• Towels that have done the door job are wet towels. They go in the wet sack too.
• Nothing dripping shares a stuff sack with the bag, the pad, or the headlamp.

A lantern that can get rained on

The camp light hangs where a splash is likely: the vestibule, under the tarp, the table. Pick one whose listing actually prints a water rating, and do not leave it standing in a puddle with the port open.

• Charge it at home. A storm day is a bad day to discover the battery was a memory.
• Hang it. A lantern on the ground is a lantern in the water.
• A bright area light with no water rating stays in the car or under a real roof.

A headlamp on your body

The lamp that stakes the last guy line is the one on your head, not the one on the table. A second light that is not your phone still lives in the car.

• Charged before you leave, with the cable you have tested.
• Do not charge it in the rain. Close the port before it goes outside.
• Red mode inside the tent so you are not lighting the walls up and adding heat you then have to vent.

Power, kept dry

A power station is a dry-box appliance. Rain does not care that the case looks tough. Phones and a headlamp are a small station. A 12V fridge is the larger class on the power page, and it still does not get to sit in standing water.

• The station sits on a table, a bin lid, or the car floor. Not the dirt.
• Do not run a station, a power bank, or a lantern while it sits in a puddle.
• Unused ports stay closed. A trash bag is a cover for a move to the car, not a way to operate it in the rain.
• Cables that must run come in under the fly and stay off the ground.
• Leave home full. Do not count on a panel under a storm.
• When you hear thunder, unplug it and put it in the car.

Water when the creek is muddy

Bring the drinking and cooking water from home. Spigots get shut off, and a creek after rain is silt. About a gallon per person for drinking and cooking is the same planning habit as the first-trip list, plus what you would need if you had a fire the site still allows. That is a habit, not a measurement we took.

• Jugs with lids that do not leak into the trunk.
• A filter only if you might use surface water, and only one you have already run at the sink. Silt after a storm clogs a squeeze filter.
• A pot, so you can boil if the filter quits.
• Do not drink the puddle, the ditch, or the muddy creek because you are already wet.

Lightning: get in the car

If you can hear thunder, you are close enough. A tent, a tarp, a picnic shelter, and a lone tree are not shelters. The hard-topped car you drove in is the shelter, windows up. The usual rule is to wait 30 minutes after the last thunder before you get back out. We did not invent that rule. Use it.

• Thunder: people in the car. Unplug the station first and take it with you.
• Sit inside. Keep hands off the metal frame.
• Do not stand in a puddle holding a cable, a tent pole, or a guy line.
• If water is rising on the pad or the road, you leave. You do not wait to see how deep the wash gets. You do not drive through moving water.
• After the last thunder, give it the 30 minutes, then check the fly and the stakes before anyone moves the bag.