January 30, 2025 • 26 mins
🚨 We Got Caught in a Tornado! 🚨 | Full-Time RV Life Gone Wrong
Did you know they make tornado-proof RVs?! …Yeah, neither did we. 😅
In this episode of The Wandering RV Show, we’re sharing the wildest thing that’s happened to us yet—getting caught in a tornado while living full-time on the road. From what went down that day to the aftermath, repairs, and what we learned, we’re giving you the full breakdown so you can (hopefully) avoid a similar situation.
🔥 What We Cover in This Episode:
✅ The day we got hit by a tornado 🌪️
✅ The chaos that followed (repairs, injuries & more)
✅ Why we didn’t evacuate (the tough choices we had to make)
✅ Lessons learned—our battery bank & insurance saved us!
✅ How YOU can stay safe in severe weather while RVing
It’s been a crazy year, and we’re finally back after a much-needed hiatus. If you’ve followed us for a while, you know we don’t hold back on sharing our screw-ups, successes, and all the behind-the-scenes moments of full-time RV life.
💬 Have you ever faced extreme weather while traveling? Drop a comment and let us know your experience!
👉 Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE and hit that 🔔 to follow along on all our adventures (and misadventures)!
📌 Follow Us:
📸 Instagram: https://bit.ly/3MAV2sC
📘 Facebook: https://bit.ly/3GBAYT7
🎙️ Podcast: https://bit.ly/3o2pC4a
🎵 TikTok: http://bit.ly/41hT1FB
🏕️ Happy Camping & Stay Safe Out There! Byyyyeeeeeee!
🚐✨ Support us through our Amazon Store: https://podcast.wanderingbabe.com/amazonstore
*Special thanks for our Intro/Outro music to Stock Media provided by stockmusic331 / Pond5
Did you know they make tornado-proof RVs?! …Yeah, neither did we. 😅
In this episode of The Wandering RV Show, we’re sharing the wildest thing that’s happened to us yet—getting caught in a tornado while living full-time on the road. From what went down that day to the aftermath, repairs, and what we learned, we’re giving you the full breakdown so you can (hopefully) avoid a similar situation.
🔥 What We Cover in This Episode:
✅ The day we got hit by a tornado 🌪️
✅ The chaos that followed (repairs, injuries & more)
✅ Why we didn’t evacuate (the tough choices we had to make)
✅ Lessons learned—our battery bank & insurance saved us!
✅ How YOU can stay safe in severe weather while RVing
It’s been a crazy year, and we’re finally back after a much-needed hiatus. If you’ve followed us for a while, you know we don’t hold back on sharing our screw-ups, successes, and all the behind-the-scenes moments of full-time RV life.
💬 Have you ever faced extreme weather while traveling? Drop a comment and let us know your experience!
👉 Don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE and hit that 🔔 to follow along on all our adventures (and misadventures)!
📌 Follow Us:
📸 Instagram: https://bit.ly/3MAV2sC
📘 Facebook: https://bit.ly/3GBAYT7
🎙️ Podcast: https://bit.ly/3o2pC4a
🎵 TikTok: http://bit.ly/41hT1FB
🏕️ Happy Camping & Stay Safe Out There! Byyyyeeeeeee!
🚐✨ Support us through our Amazon Store: https://podcast.wanderingbabe.com/amazonstore
*Special thanks for our Intro/Outro music to Stock Media provided by stockmusic331 / Pond5
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, podcast listener, thanks for listening to us on your
way to work or you know, to your next camping trip.
This is a YouTube first show, so if you want
the full experience, go check us out on YouTube too,
YouTube two, YouTube to do two, to do Do two too.
Did you know that they make tornado proof RV's No,
I didn't know that. You didn't. No, Well, well okay,
(00:21):
well they really don't, but ours survived. We're image right now.
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
So here's what happened.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to the Wandering RV Show.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Your source for our stories, our screwups, and.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Our success is living the full time RV life. I'm Kara,
your hosts the Wandering RV Babe, and this is my
driver Ryan hot It. Did you know we live in
a tornado proof rvy? It's great, it's awesome. We really don't.
In this episode, we're breaking down the craziest thing that
has ever happened to us while doing this full time
RV life, what we learned from it, and how you
(01:00):
can avoid it in the future. If you're a podcast
listener or you follow us on YouTube, you may have
noticed that we took a little bit of the hiatus
from the show this last year.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, it got a little bit crazy, starting with me
injuring my back in May.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
And then the suspension broke on the RV. We had
some pretty major repairs that we had to like kind
of get done and band aid fix it on our
way back to Florida, and then.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
We got hit by a tornado.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
But first make sure you hit that notification bell and
subscribe so you don't miss an episode because we're back baby.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Real quick, Kara, do you want to go see Star Wars?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
There is there a new one coming out?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I mean, is this like a good Star Wars where
we meet like Luke and Leah and we get like
full on really cool, crazy scary Doroth Vader or is
this like like Mary Poppins Lea flying through the sky
and Jar Jar binks kind of kind of Star Wars?
Because my ANSWER's gonna vary depending on what you answer.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Is my answer is it is it's a Star Wars parody.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Game on. I'm there. I'm good.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You jumped on too quickly. Unfortunately, the last qualifier, I
don't know, we might send you over the edge.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
All right, what is the last qualifier? Then?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Burlesque?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I gonna get behind that.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
There's one in Orlando.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Is that really?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I want to go see it.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I mean, I can make for some fun content just saying.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Okay, now we got to get into the tornado. What happened?
Why were we in it? And why didn't we leave?
I guess yeah, why.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Didn't we leave? I think I think that's probably the
number one question people ask because we got hit by
the tornado that was part of the string of like
thirty something tornadoes that popped up when Hurricane Milton was
coming through Florida and we were in southeast Florida when
it hit.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, so the reason we didn't leave I alluded to
it a little bit at maybe you alluded to it
at the beginning. We broke our suspension and we had
to have some repair work done.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So all of that and you had to have some
repair work done too.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yes, the RV needed to go in the shop. I
needed to go in the shop. It was very important.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Everybody needed to go in the shop.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I don't know where to go with that. Okay, I'm
so done, bye guys.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Okay, Well, let's hit on the real reason why we
didn't leaves. As Ryan mentioned before, we had a lot
of challenges We weren't sure if we could make it
back out of Florida because we would have to pass
right through the eye of that tornado, or the eye
of the hurricane. The eye of the hurricane.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
It's the eye of the tiger.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeall, this is what I deal with every single day.
I don't I don't understand. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's not very nice.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
We didn't know if we would get stranded trying to
get back out of the way, and the place that
we were in was actually accepting evacuees in We were
not in an evacuation zone, and so we were concerned
we would get stranded in the middle of the road.
There were fuel shortages, there were traffic issues, and getting
(04:13):
out in time was gonna be a little sketchy, especially
with all of the other challenges that we had going
on at the time.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, and so part of that is the fact that
the suspecially was the suspension was recently damaged. We didn't
know how well of a repair job we got the
mobile RV tech.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That repaired it to begin with.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
To be in with was a little I don't know.
He was not sure that I really truly trusted everything
he said and did but because of the way it broke,
we were concerned about the other side. We were concerned
about the work that he did, and our tires were
getting bald, and there were some other things going on.
Once we got here, it was like, okay, well, if
we leave, we're leaving the trailer and this trailer ain't
(04:54):
survive and you know, if it gets really bad. But
then we saw it shift and it started to shift
north north of US and we were only anticipating sixty
five mile per hour winds. That was it, which is
one hundred percent tolerable in the RV, even as a
side wind. Believe me, I've tested. We were in it.
We were in Yeah, no, I know, we did a
(05:16):
bunch of research. We knew what was supposed to be happening.
The problem was the unprecedented amount of tornadoes.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, and so we knew the day of that they
were calling for some tornadoes and you know, most people
were expecting kind of small water spouts things like that,
which don't knock those If you're in an RV, A
tornado is a tornado is a tornado.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
So we is a tornado a tornado?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
It is, it is, it is, especially when you're in
an RV because it's like, you know, just a box
of cardboard and plywood and aluminum. That is what an
RV is.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
So there's a steel frame.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
There is a steel frame, and well, in most cases.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Sorry, I'm checking to see where my dog was for
and I didn't want to, like stay, we didn't want to.
I didn't I was about to step back, and I
was afraid I was gonna step on her. And so
it's trying to be nice because I got to step back.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
There we go. But by the time that they were
talking about, hey, we could see some extra tornado activity today,
we were already you know, kind of cone set and committed.
But the thing is is that we could have gone
a little further south. We talked about going a little
further south on the morning of yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
But we couldn't find a campground that I could say,
one hundred had an actual like tornado shelter. I had
like bath houses, but and they said that they were
you know, fairly safe, but no, like the where we
were at. We had a solid like cinder block style
bathhouse and it survived the tornado. I mean literally it
(06:45):
literally hit the bathhouse and tore the roof off on
a part of it, part of it that wasn't made
of cinder block, and the part that was made of
cinder block was fine, perfectly safe.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Exactly, And that's something that you can't overlook, especially if
you're gonna be rving in the South or anywhere where
there's tornadic activity. Tornado I know, I used to Oh
my gosh, I know it's vocabulary is on point today.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
That eighth grade education is really doing it?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Is it is? I think it's actually sixth grade education.
But you know, no big deal. Anyway, we always were
from Texas originally. We know what tornadoes look like, we
know how bad they can be, and so we always
look for campgrounds that have tornado shelters. Most of the
time it's going to be a bathhouse or a laundry
room or something like that, but we look for shelters
just in case, because you never know when those suckers
(07:32):
can cop can prop see I was doing good with words,
now not so much. You never know when those suckers
can cop crop up, crop up. Oh my gosh, what
is the matter with You never know what a tornado's
gonna hit. There we go. So that's why we didn't
leave some of you are still gonna say, ah, you
(07:52):
should have gotten out of there, You should have done this,
you should have done that, whatever it is, what it is,
But we didn't. We stayed. We stayed in the shelter
during the tornado and during the hurricane itself. We were
in there for like eighteen hours. It was not great,
what I.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Want to say about that. And I again, I know
you're never going to agree with us.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Some of you might, some of you might.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
But for those of you who don't agree with us,
understand that we're evaluating everything day over day, like leading
up to you know, with any hurricane you got a
little bit of notice. We were evaluating every single day
what was going to be our best course of action?
Go north, go south? We were put we were at
the very southern end of it. Like always, there was
never a chance that it was gonna come right over
(08:34):
top of us. We're always gonna be on the south side.
Is just how far south? And when you're talking about
truck trailer, all your worldly possessions and everything like that,
you're evaluating things on a daily basis, trying to figure
out I don't want to lose everything, honestly, I yeah,
And so if I can make the best situation work here,
(08:54):
then I'm gonna make that situation work. If I need
to leave, I'm gonna leave. And we made the best
decision because we knew we couldn't leave. We survived. All
of our stuff survived, and you know, that's all we
can hope for now.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I will say some of our camping neighbors and r
V neighbors were not as fortunate. They lost everything because
there was an unprecedented amount of tornadoes. It was a really,
really scary day. But thankfully, at least where we were at,
the people that we knew or knew of, they were
not hurt. They didn't lose their lives, and that storm
(09:28):
shelter came in clutch. So what happened was this was
the craziest story. So we you know, they had started
kind of the tornado warnings all throughout the day. Again,
I say, we're from Texas. We know what the sky
looks like when a tornado's about to drop. And so
(09:49):
we were in the bath house. We were just hanging out.
We wanted to make sure and stay safe. We had
our pop with us, she was in the bathhouse as
well with us. There was a few other people who
stayed at the campground who also were hanging out. So
we were getting really cozy, and all of a sudden,
the tornado warnings just kind of all lifted. Yeah, and
so we're like, well, okay, this is great. So we
(10:10):
were like, all right, we're gonna be in this for
the long haul. So a few of us ventured out
of the storm shelter to go get provisions. So his
back was hurting really bad. I went to get him
some pain medicine and then some just some snacks, extra water,
things like that, and coffee and coffee.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And so if you follow us on TikTok, you will
have heard the story of how you're not even wearing it.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It was on the charger right next to us.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Here we go put your code in.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Code is in watches on It was right next to me.
It was right here.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
So if you follow us on the social media, you
know the Apple Watch saved Kara's life.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
It did.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
You should all be like, y'all all need to write
into Apple and be like thank you. Because the wandering
our vbabe, the most important and RV babe in the world.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
You're biased, maybe maybe a little bit, survived because of
Apple yeah, we're okay, we're not sponsored by Apple or
anything like that, but this.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Was this was nuts so stress Apple.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So we you know, ventured out to go get extra provisions,
and in the clubhouse, we're like, man, it'd be really
nice to have a good cup of coffee. So we
brewed a pot of coffee and there were some you know,
ceramic coffee books that were up there, so grab some coffee,
went back and it was good to go. Well, a
couple of minutes went by and I had maybe had
(11:37):
two SIPs of my coffee, and I looked down at
my Apple watch, did not have my phone with me
or anything, and I saw, oh, three minutes ago, a
new tornado warning was just issued for our area. Let's
all go back inside to the storm shelter.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, for the record, I was still in the bathhouse
slash tornado shelter. The reason for that was, like she said,
I was an immense pain and I really couldn't do
hardly anything at that moment.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, we found out weeks A couple weeks later, he
actually had to have emergency surgery on his back. So
it wasn't just like a oh, I like tore a
muscle in my back kind of thing. It was pretty
gnarly injury. So anyway, so I noticed, oh, there's a
tornado warning, let's go back into the bathhouse. Now, what
I will say about this is I was just kind
(12:24):
of moseying back into the bath house because the sky
was clear. It actually wasn't really super windy. It had
been windy earlier that day, but it wasn't really windy.
It was fairly calm, and the sky didn't look like
it typically does when a tornado hits. I get into
the bath house, though, maybe took two more SIPs of
(12:44):
my coffee, maybe another minute passed, and then all of
a sudden it hit. And when it hit it was
like that.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
So first, when anybody tells you about like the noise,
you do you hear the freight train. Yes, you hear
the freight train when it's nearby, when it's coming over
top of your head. It's more like a freight train
while you're taking off in an airplane, and you feel
the pressure change all at the same time, and it's
(13:16):
like you're hearing the freight train outside of the of
the airplane while you're taking off. That's what it really
feels and sounds like. And when I felt that pressure change,
I tell you what, my adrenaline kicked up. I grabbed
her and took her into one of the bath stalls
and just held on for dear life. I pulled a
full on twister move of like wrapping my arm around
(13:39):
the metal bar, like trying to okay, I've got her,
and we were fine.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, we were okay. We tried to get as small
as we could, We tried to get as low down
to the ground as we could. We tried to hang
on to it. I mean, the rail on the shower
probably wasn't gonna be stardy enough, but it was what
we could grab onto. At the time.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
It made you feel safe.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
It did make you feel a little bit safer, so
we grabbed onto that. There was debris flying everywhere.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
There were outside inside.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Well inside though, like the rafters had all kinds of debris.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Oh yeah, like dust and dust and stuff that was.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Just falling on top of our heads. At one point
I looked up and there were some skylights above us,
and I actually saw the skylight break and then just
get sucked right out as this thing is just spinning
over the top of our heads. It was the scariest
thing that we have ever ever been through. But it
only lasted. It felt like it lasted in eternity. It
(14:37):
probably only lasted about ten seconds.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I don't know if it's scarier than the time that
I almost went off the side of an overpass. Hmm.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Oh yeah, when you were seventeen you're driving like a maniac.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, that's a close call.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
It is a close call.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
AnyWho, Hey Amazon packages here, Oh hey, look it's for you.
It usually is it's anything Breakablebly it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
So in the aftermath, what we've found was just craziness.
Like I said, there were a lot of homes that
were destroyed, There were a lot of our v's that
were destroyed. Our certainly had damage. A tree fell on
the truck. So it's been a bit of a long road. Thankfully,
neither one of our truck or our camper were totaled,
(15:27):
but it did take about three months for us to
get them back from the repair shop. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Keep in mind this happened on October ninth. Actually, technically
I think the tornado hit on October eighth, or do
I think it was the ninth?
Speaker 1 (15:39):
In this hint?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, the tornado hit on the ninth. The hurricane didn't
even hit till that, like overnight or nine.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
The hurricane was fine. Yeah, but it's taken us this long.
It's early part of January of twenty twenty five, and
we just now got both the camper and the truck
back and there's some residual repairs on both that need
to kind of be worked out.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It's not over by a long shot now, but.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
We are very very thankful to be back in our home,
back with our truck that toes our home, and we
are very close to being ready to hit the road.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Again, hit the road again.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And you bet no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
We went to totally.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
We started singing different songs with all that in mind, starting.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Dog just moved the camera. Thanks. We are starting back
up with our weekly show where we're going to be
talking to you guys one on one about what's been
going on for us, what's been going on in our
V life, what's been going on with our V industry,
with everything that we can think of.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Text tricks, miss and all of our fun stories so
that you can learn from our mistakes and not repeat
them yourself. So with that in mind, we actually have
some lessons learned from this whole situation on what we
learned and how you can avoid it in the future.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
They can avoid it by not being in a hurricane.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Well, yeah, that's true. So yeah, if you can get out,
you should get out.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
But to get out, you're gonna need to watch the
weather very closely. Yes, you are, because which direction you go,
depending on where you're at. Like if you're on the
western edge of a northwestern edge of Florida and the
hurricanes coming through heading west is pretty easy. If you're
on the southeastern edge, things are a little bit more complicated.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
That's the other thing too, is you know, we had
a bit of a perfect storm all kind of compile
on us at once, and that's something to watch out for.
Sometimes shit just happens and you can't account for it.
You can't plan for it. But what you can do
is be prepared for Plan B and Plan C and
Plan D if necessary.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And have full time or insurance. Really, full time or
insurance is very very important. I don't if you're a
full timer.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
If you yeah, if you full time, RV, full time
or insury is out there, it is absolutely necessary to
have it. I don't know how we would have done
this without.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
It, I mean we would have just I mean, we
would have just had to like give up.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, we would have had to have taken a
big break from even doing RV life at all. Because
our full time insurance, now it's not cheap, but it
is absolutely worth it to have if you're going to
do full time ARVY life. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Now, whether or not they cancel our insurance after having
to fill all of this, that's a whole different story.
We'll follow up in the next couple of months.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Or high those premiums up.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
We'll keep an eye on it, and we'll let you
know what Progressive does to.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Us exactly exactly. So far, they've been really great to
work with a couple of bobbles and bumps along the way,
but what we found is if we stay on top
of communication between them and the repair shops, it's gone
fairly smoothly. The other thing that came in clutch in
this whole situation was a battery bank.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Oh yes, so I actually got the battery bank. It's
actually back here under the under the sink. It's actually
for the fridge because it's a residential fridge, as you
can see, runs off of Standard one to twenty volte whatever,
I don't care what at one ten I don't know.
It runs off the inverter, which runs off of our batteries,
which only gets me about like five or six hours.
(19:21):
So when we've had to boon dock in the past,
the fridge dies overnight, which is usually okay, like for
the most part, probably everything stays good. You really don't
have to worry too much about it. But what the
battery bank which the fridge is plugged into does is
allows us to make sure we have like a good
ten to twelve hours of solid, which actually came in
(19:42):
handy back when we broke our suspension earlier this year.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
It definitely didn't.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Because we were only thirty minutes down the road, couldn't
find a campground to stay at, and so we had
to boon dock that night. But it wasn't like we
were arriving at like five pm and just boon docking overnight. No,
we arrived at like one and then had to boon
dock all the way till the next morning. And so
like luckily we got you know the solid, you know,
almost twelve hours out of it.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, because before the fridge would just suck the battery dead,
and the hard part with that is, yes, our food
is pretty well gonna stay good as long as we
don't open the fridge. The problem, though, is that all
of the power in the RV is then gone, so
you can't pull the slides in, you can't pull the
struts up, you can't hardly do anything until it charges
back up. And even plugging it back into the truck
(20:28):
is kind of like a trickle charge, so it takes
a while.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Not the best situation, and this is the reason we
bought the battery bank, but it ended up being really
useful in this scenario because we just well I didn't
because I couldn't lift at the time.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Unfortunately, I just huffed it into the bath house.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Listen, she's strong girl. She brought it into the bath
house and so we were able to plug in our
phones keep them charge. Everybody in the area was able
to plug in their phones keep them charged throughout the
night because we lost power immediately when the tornado hit. Yeah,
the tornado hit at four pm. The hurricane, I don't
even think it a landfall into like eight pm and
then passed the worst of it passed through our area
(21:05):
at like four am. So most people's phones are like
dying during this We're all trying to keep up with weather.
There's no power in anywhere. Now, we did get a
generator up and going at one point, yeah, but we
didn't want to have that running the entire time, especially
when the hurricane winds started to hit, so we needed
to be able to adjust and switch over and everybody
could start plugging into the battery bank.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, so that was super, super helpful as well. And
then of course we've already talked about the Apple Watch
and just in general being very very weather aware connected.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I'm gonna say connect. Yes, that's a great way to
because whether you have an Apple Watch or not, your
phone is a very connected device already. Carrying your phone
with you, having your phone with you. In the case
of her going to the coffee, she didn't have the
Apple Watch, probably good idea to have her phone with
her so that way she knows, like if there's a
tornado warning.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah, because I forgot to mention this, but the area
that we were in in the clubhouse that had the
coffee was completely destroyed. So if I hadn't had my
Apple Watch and I had stayed in there two minutes longer,
I would have been caught up in that whole mess,
which would not have been good.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
So those are our tips and tricks for you now.
Avoiding the hurricane obviously, that's the number one thing, avoiding
those circumstances as best you can. We always talked about like, hey, like,
especially with a hurricane, you could have enough forewarning to
get up and get out of there. And that's mostly true,
and I still think that that is one hundred percent
(22:27):
the best bet, But sometimes you got to look at
things and kind of analyze what is actually the best thing,
because you know.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Again, circumstance has a lot to do with it in
your situation, and every all the variables need to be
a factor in your decision making.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, you could one hundred percent leave, get stuck in traffic,
and now you're actually in the dead center rather than
being on the outer edge, and that's always a concern.
So just keep that in mind that getting away is
still number one priority, but sometimes you gotta adjust and
plan around.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It, and for things like tornadoes, for things like random
thunderstorms or hailstorms or other types of random weather events
that you could hit on the road doing full time
RV live or even doing trips when you're going and
you're you know, you do the weekend warrior thing that
you really can't account for. So that's where knowing that
(23:19):
you've got a storm shelter nearby, that's where planning and advance,
having a tank full of gas, things like that are
going to be really really helpful.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
And we called it out last week. We haven't we
haven't done anything. We haven't done any research on them,
but arvweather dot com Sure Route is their subscription service
that they provide, but they also provide a ton of
free resources to be able to look at everything that is,
all them different models that are out there. So I'm
giving them another shout out this week because we're talking
about weather and I think it's a really useful tool.
(23:48):
We're going to be checking it out, exploring it, kind
of experimenting with it ourselves, and maybe we even get
somebody from them to show up on the show at
one point.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah. Yeah, I've actually been using them all this week
when there's been you know a lot of that snowy
weather that was hitting for parts of the country and
things like that, and they were it was really really
comprehensive and that was just on their free side, like
before the paywall. Yeah, so it was. It was really
informative and kind of easy to read information. Plus it
really kind of helps to give some really good forecasts
(24:20):
that are free to ten days out that are fairly accurate.
They're straight from Noah, so really good stuff. I would
highly recommend checking them out, even if you just use
their free version, it's going to be a helpful tool
to use, especially with RB life.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I was really trying to think of a funny way
to make a joke about Noah Noah's arc weather, but
I couldn't, so I just saying it what all ran
through my head. It was funny in my head.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Hey, caepers, we'd love to stay connected. Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook,
and YouTube at Wandering r V Bay. Thanks for joining us.
Let's do it again next weekend. Happy camping fie. You're
a nerd.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
You're a nerd.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
You're a nerd?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Why am I a nerd.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And you're a weather nerd? Maybe just a little bit,
maybe just a little bit. How many weather apps do
you have on your phone? Now?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Be honest, Well, I have to still rvweather dot Com
is not an app, so that that one doesn't count, okay,
but then I have my radar, Samsung Weather, Carrot Weather.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I think one more that I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
The name of. Yeah, yeah, I think there's at least
one more.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And then rvweather dot com.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
You know you're tork.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Actually, for the longest time, I actually had the tab
up open in my browser to go to the n
oa's Novah's website so I could pull all those maps
up myself. And then I found out that rvweather dot com.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Was pulling and I was like, oh, that's a lot easier,
Like that's really handy, And
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Now why are your claps so loud
Hey, podcast listener, thanks for listening to us on your
way to work or you know, to your next camping trip.
This is a YouTube first show, so if you want
the full experience, go check us out on YouTube too,
YouTube two, YouTube to do two, to do Do two too.
Did you know that they make tornado proof RV's No,
I didn't know that. You didn't. No, Well, well okay,
(00:21):
well they really don't, but ours survived. We're image right now.
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
So here's what happened.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome to the Wandering RV Show.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Your source for our stories, our screwups, and.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Our success is living the full time RV life. I'm Kara,
your hosts the Wandering RV Babe, and this is my
driver Ryan hot It. Did you know we live in
a tornado proof rvy? It's great, it's awesome. We really don't.
In this episode, we're breaking down the craziest thing that
has ever happened to us while doing this full time
RV life, what we learned from it, and how you
(01:00):
can avoid it in the future. If you're a podcast
listener or you follow us on YouTube, you may have
noticed that we took a little bit of the hiatus
from the show this last year.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, it got a little bit crazy, starting with me
injuring my back in May.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
And then the suspension broke on the RV. We had
some pretty major repairs that we had to like kind
of get done and band aid fix it on our
way back to Florida, and then.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
We got hit by a tornado.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
But first make sure you hit that notification bell and
subscribe so you don't miss an episode because we're back baby.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Real quick, Kara, do you want to go see Star Wars?
Speaker 1 (01:36):
There is there a new one coming out?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
I mean, is this like a good Star Wars where
we meet like Luke and Leah and we get like
full on really cool, crazy scary Doroth Vader or is
this like like Mary Poppins Lea flying through the sky
and Jar Jar binks kind of kind of Star Wars?
Because my ANSWER's gonna vary depending on what you answer.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Is my answer is it is it's a Star Wars parody.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Game on. I'm there. I'm good.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
You jumped on too quickly. Unfortunately, the last qualifier, I
don't know, we might send you over the edge.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
All right, what is the last qualifier? Then?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Burlesque?
Speaker 1 (02:17):
I gonna get behind that.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
There's one in Orlando.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Is that really?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I want to go see it.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I mean, I can make for some fun content just saying.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Okay, now we got to get into the tornado. What happened?
Why were we in it? And why didn't we leave?
I guess yeah, why.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Didn't we leave? I think I think that's probably the
number one question people ask because we got hit by
the tornado that was part of the string of like
thirty something tornadoes that popped up when Hurricane Milton was
coming through Florida and we were in southeast Florida when
it hit.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Yeah, so the reason we didn't leave I alluded to
it a little bit at maybe you alluded to it
at the beginning. We broke our suspension and we had
to have some repair work done.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So all of that and you had to have some
repair work done too.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yes, the RV needed to go in the shop. I
needed to go in the shop. It was very important.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Everybody needed to go in the shop.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I don't know where to go with that. Okay, I'm
so done, bye guys.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Okay, Well, let's hit on the real reason why we
didn't leaves. As Ryan mentioned before, we had a lot
of challenges We weren't sure if we could make it
back out of Florida because we would have to pass
right through the eye of that tornado, or the eye
of the hurricane. The eye of the hurricane.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
It's the eye of the tiger.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeall, this is what I deal with every single day.
I don't I don't understand. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's not very nice.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
We didn't know if we would get stranded trying to
get back out of the way, and the place that
we were in was actually accepting evacuees in We were
not in an evacuation zone, and so we were concerned
we would get stranded in the middle of the road.
There were fuel shortages, there were traffic issues, and getting
(04:13):
out in time was gonna be a little sketchy, especially
with all of the other challenges that we had going
on at the time.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
Yeah, and so part of that is the fact that
the suspecially was the suspension was recently damaged. We didn't
know how well of a repair job we got the
mobile RV tech.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
That repaired it to begin with.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
To be in with was a little I don't know.
He was not sure that I really truly trusted everything
he said and did but because of the way it broke,
we were concerned about the other side. We were concerned
about the work that he did, and our tires were
getting bald, and there were some other things going on.
Once we got here, it was like, okay, well, if
we leave, we're leaving the trailer and this trailer ain't
(04:54):
survive and you know, if it gets really bad. But
then we saw it shift and it started to shift
north north of US and we were only anticipating sixty
five mile per hour winds. That was it, which is
one hundred percent tolerable in the RV, even as a
side wind. Believe me, I've tested. We were in it.
We were in Yeah, no, I know, we did a
(05:16):
bunch of research. We knew what was supposed to be happening.
The problem was the unprecedented amount of tornadoes.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, and so we knew the day of that they
were calling for some tornadoes and you know, most people
were expecting kind of small water spouts things like that,
which don't knock those If you're in an RV, A
tornado is a tornado is a tornado.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
So we is a tornado a tornado?
Speaker 1 (05:39):
It is, it is, it is, especially when you're in
an RV because it's like, you know, just a box
of cardboard and plywood and aluminum. That is what an
RV is.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
So there's a steel frame.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
There is a steel frame, and well, in most cases.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Sorry, I'm checking to see where my dog was for
and I didn't want to, like stay, we didn't want to.
I didn't I was about to step back, and I
was afraid I was gonna step on her. And so
it's trying to be nice because I got to step back.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
There we go. But by the time that they were
talking about, hey, we could see some extra tornado activity today,
we were already you know, kind of cone set and committed.
But the thing is is that we could have gone
a little further south. We talked about going a little
further south on the morning of yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
But we couldn't find a campground that I could say,
one hundred had an actual like tornado shelter. I had
like bath houses, but and they said that they were
you know, fairly safe, but no, like the where we
were at. We had a solid like cinder block style
bathhouse and it survived the tornado. I mean literally it
(06:45):
literally hit the bathhouse and tore the roof off on
a part of it, part of it that wasn't made
of cinder block, and the part that was made of
cinder block was fine, perfectly safe.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Exactly, And that's something that you can't overlook, especially if
you're gonna be rving in the South or anywhere where
there's tornadic activity. Tornado I know, I used to Oh
my gosh, I know it's vocabulary is on point today.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
That eighth grade education is really doing it?
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Is it is? I think it's actually sixth grade education.
But you know, no big deal. Anyway, we always were
from Texas originally. We know what tornadoes look like, we
know how bad they can be, and so we always
look for campgrounds that have tornado shelters. Most of the
time it's going to be a bathhouse or a laundry
room or something like that, but we look for shelters
just in case, because you never know when those suckers
(07:32):
can cop can prop see I was doing good with words,
now not so much. You never know when those suckers
can cop crop up, crop up. Oh my gosh, what
is the matter with You never know what a tornado's
gonna hit. There we go. So that's why we didn't
leave some of you are still gonna say, ah, you
(07:52):
should have gotten out of there, You should have done this,
you should have done that, whatever it is, what it is,
But we didn't. We stayed. We stayed in the shelter
during the tornado and during the hurricane itself. We were
in there for like eighteen hours. It was not great,
what I.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Want to say about that. And I again, I know
you're never going to agree with us.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Some of you might, some of you might.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
But for those of you who don't agree with us,
understand that we're evaluating everything day over day, like leading
up to you know, with any hurricane you got a
little bit of notice. We were evaluating every single day
what was going to be our best course of action?
Go north, go south? We were put we were at
the very southern end of it. Like always, there was
never a chance that it was gonna come right over
(08:34):
top of us. We're always gonna be on the south side.
Is just how far south? And when you're talking about
truck trailer, all your worldly possessions and everything like that,
you're evaluating things on a daily basis, trying to figure
out I don't want to lose everything, honestly, I yeah,
And so if I can make the best situation work here,
(08:54):
then I'm gonna make that situation work. If I need
to leave, I'm gonna leave. And we made the best
decision because we knew we couldn't leave. We survived. All
of our stuff survived, and you know, that's all we
can hope for now.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I will say some of our camping neighbors and r
V neighbors were not as fortunate. They lost everything because
there was an unprecedented amount of tornadoes. It was a really,
really scary day. But thankfully, at least where we were at,
the people that we knew or knew of, they were
not hurt. They didn't lose their lives, and that storm
(09:28):
shelter came in clutch. So what happened was this was
the craziest story. So we you know, they had started
kind of the tornado warnings all throughout the day. Again,
I say, we're from Texas. We know what the sky
looks like when a tornado's about to drop. And so
(09:49):
we were in the bath house. We were just hanging out.
We wanted to make sure and stay safe. We had
our pop with us, she was in the bathhouse as
well with us. There was a few other people who
stayed at the campground who also were hanging out. So
we were getting really cozy, and all of a sudden,
the tornado warnings just kind of all lifted. Yeah, and
so we're like, well, okay, this is great. So we
(10:10):
were like, all right, we're gonna be in this for
the long haul. So a few of us ventured out
of the storm shelter to go get provisions. So his
back was hurting really bad. I went to get him
some pain medicine and then some just some snacks, extra water,
things like that, and coffee and coffee.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And so if you follow us on TikTok, you will
have heard the story of how you're not even wearing it.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
It was on the charger right next to us.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Here we go put your code in.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Code is in watches on It was right next to me.
It was right here.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
So if you follow us on the social media, you
know the Apple Watch saved Kara's life.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
It did.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
You should all be like, y'all all need to write
into Apple and be like thank you. Because the wandering
our vbabe, the most important and RV babe in the world.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
You're biased, maybe maybe a little bit, survived because of
Apple yeah, we're okay, we're not sponsored by Apple or
anything like that, but this.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Was this was nuts so stress Apple.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So we you know, ventured out to go get extra provisions,
and in the clubhouse, we're like, man, it'd be really
nice to have a good cup of coffee. So we
brewed a pot of coffee and there were some you know,
ceramic coffee books that were up there, so grab some coffee,
went back and it was good to go. Well, a
couple of minutes went by and I had maybe had
(11:37):
two SIPs of my coffee, and I looked down at
my Apple watch, did not have my phone with me
or anything, and I saw, oh, three minutes ago, a
new tornado warning was just issued for our area. Let's
all go back inside to the storm shelter.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah, for the record, I was still in the bathhouse
slash tornado shelter. The reason for that was, like she said,
I was an immense pain and I really couldn't do
hardly anything at that moment.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, we found out weeks A couple weeks later, he
actually had to have emergency surgery on his back. So
it wasn't just like a oh, I like tore a
muscle in my back kind of thing. It was pretty
gnarly injury. So anyway, so I noticed, oh, there's a
tornado warning, let's go back into the bathhouse. Now, what
I will say about this is I was just kind
(12:24):
of moseying back into the bath house because the sky
was clear. It actually wasn't really super windy. It had
been windy earlier that day, but it wasn't really windy.
It was fairly calm, and the sky didn't look like
it typically does when a tornado hits. I get into
the bath house, though, maybe took two more SIPs of
(12:44):
my coffee, maybe another minute passed, and then all of
a sudden it hit. And when it hit it was
like that.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
So first, when anybody tells you about like the noise,
you do you hear the freight train. Yes, you hear
the freight train when it's nearby, when it's coming over
top of your head. It's more like a freight train
while you're taking off in an airplane, and you feel
the pressure change all at the same time, and it's
(13:16):
like you're hearing the freight train outside of the of
the airplane while you're taking off. That's what it really
feels and sounds like. And when I felt that pressure change,
I tell you what, my adrenaline kicked up. I grabbed
her and took her into one of the bath stalls
and just held on for dear life. I pulled a
full on twister move of like wrapping my arm around
(13:39):
the metal bar, like trying to okay, I've got her,
and we were fine.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Yeah, we were okay. We tried to get as small
as we could, We tried to get as low down
to the ground as we could. We tried to hang
on to it. I mean, the rail on the shower
probably wasn't gonna be stardy enough, but it was what
we could grab onto. At the time.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
It made you feel safe.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
It did make you feel a little bit safer, so
we grabbed onto that. There was debris flying everywhere.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
There were outside inside.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Well inside though, like the rafters had all kinds of debris.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Oh yeah, like dust and dust and stuff that was.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Just falling on top of our heads. At one point
I looked up and there were some skylights above us,
and I actually saw the skylight break and then just
get sucked right out as this thing is just spinning
over the top of our heads. It was the scariest
thing that we have ever ever been through. But it
only lasted. It felt like it lasted in eternity. It
(14:37):
probably only lasted about ten seconds.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
I don't know if it's scarier than the time that
I almost went off the side of an overpass. Hmm.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Oh yeah, when you were seventeen you're driving like a maniac.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, that's a close call.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
It is a close call.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
AnyWho, Hey Amazon packages here, Oh hey, look it's for you.
It usually is it's anything Breakablebly it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
So in the aftermath, what we've found was just craziness.
Like I said, there were a lot of homes that
were destroyed, There were a lot of our v's that
were destroyed. Our certainly had damage. A tree fell on
the truck. So it's been a bit of a long road. Thankfully,
neither one of our truck or our camper were totaled,
(15:27):
but it did take about three months for us to
get them back from the repair shop. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Keep in mind this happened on October ninth. Actually, technically
I think the tornado hit on October eighth, or do
I think it was the ninth?
Speaker 1 (15:39):
In this hint?
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, the tornado hit on the ninth. The hurricane didn't
even hit till that, like overnight or nine.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
The hurricane was fine. Yeah, but it's taken us this long.
It's early part of January of twenty twenty five, and
we just now got both the camper and the truck
back and there's some residual repairs on both that need
to kind of be worked out.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
It's not over by a long shot now, but.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
We are very very thankful to be back in our home,
back with our truck that toes our home, and we
are very close to being ready to hit the road.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Again, hit the road again.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And you bet no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
We went to totally.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
We started singing different songs with all that in mind, starting.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Dog just moved the camera. Thanks. We are starting back
up with our weekly show where we're going to be
talking to you guys one on one about what's been
going on for us, what's been going on in our
V life, what's been going on with our V industry,
with everything that we can think of.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Text tricks, miss and all of our fun stories so
that you can learn from our mistakes and not repeat
them yourself. So with that in mind, we actually have
some lessons learned from this whole situation on what we
learned and how you can avoid it in the future.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
They can avoid it by not being in a hurricane.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Well, yeah, that's true. So yeah, if you can get out,
you should get out.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
But to get out, you're gonna need to watch the
weather very closely. Yes, you are, because which direction you go,
depending on where you're at. Like if you're on the
western edge of a northwestern edge of Florida and the
hurricanes coming through heading west is pretty easy. If you're
on the southeastern edge, things are a little bit more complicated.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
That's the other thing too, is you know, we had
a bit of a perfect storm all kind of compile
on us at once, and that's something to watch out for.
Sometimes shit just happens and you can't account for it.
You can't plan for it. But what you can do
is be prepared for Plan B and Plan C and
Plan D if necessary.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
And have full time or insurance. Really, full time or
insurance is very very important. I don't if you're a
full timer.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
If you yeah, if you full time, RV, full time
or insury is out there, it is absolutely necessary to
have it. I don't know how we would have done
this without.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
It, I mean we would have just I mean, we
would have just had to like give up.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, we would have had to have taken a
big break from even doing RV life at all. Because
our full time insurance, now it's not cheap, but it
is absolutely worth it to have if you're going to
do full time ARVY life. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Now, whether or not they cancel our insurance after having
to fill all of this, that's a whole different story.
We'll follow up in the next couple of months.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Or high those premiums up.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
We'll keep an eye on it, and we'll let you
know what Progressive does to.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Us exactly exactly. So far, they've been really great to
work with a couple of bobbles and bumps along the way,
but what we found is if we stay on top
of communication between them and the repair shops, it's gone
fairly smoothly. The other thing that came in clutch in
this whole situation was a battery bank.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Oh yes, so I actually got the battery bank. It's
actually back here under the under the sink. It's actually
for the fridge because it's a residential fridge, as you
can see, runs off of Standard one to twenty volte whatever,
I don't care what at one ten I don't know.
It runs off the inverter, which runs off of our batteries,
which only gets me about like five or six hours.
(19:21):
So when we've had to boon dock in the past,
the fridge dies overnight, which is usually okay, like for
the most part, probably everything stays good. You really don't
have to worry too much about it. But what the
battery bank which the fridge is plugged into does is
allows us to make sure we have like a good
ten to twelve hours of solid, which actually came in
(19:42):
handy back when we broke our suspension earlier this year.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
It definitely didn't.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Because we were only thirty minutes down the road, couldn't
find a campground to stay at, and so we had
to boon dock that night. But it wasn't like we
were arriving at like five pm and just boon docking overnight. No,
we arrived at like one and then had to boon
dock all the way till the next morning. And so
like luckily we got you know the solid, you know,
almost twelve hours out of it.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, because before the fridge would just suck the battery dead,
and the hard part with that is, yes, our food
is pretty well gonna stay good as long as we
don't open the fridge. The problem, though, is that all
of the power in the RV is then gone, so
you can't pull the slides in, you can't pull the
struts up, you can't hardly do anything until it charges
back up. And even plugging it back into the truck
(20:28):
is kind of like a trickle charge, so it takes
a while.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Not the best situation, and this is the reason we
bought the battery bank, but it ended up being really
useful in this scenario because we just well I didn't
because I couldn't lift at the time.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Unfortunately, I just huffed it into the bath house.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Listen, she's strong girl. She brought it into the bath
house and so we were able to plug in our
phones keep them charge. Everybody in the area was able
to plug in their phones keep them charged throughout the
night because we lost power immediately when the tornado hit. Yeah,
the tornado hit at four pm. The hurricane, I don't
even think it a landfall into like eight pm and
then passed the worst of it passed through our area
(21:05):
at like four am. So most people's phones are like
dying during this We're all trying to keep up with weather.
There's no power in anywhere. Now, we did get a
generator up and going at one point, yeah, but we
didn't want to have that running the entire time, especially
when the hurricane winds started to hit, so we needed
to be able to adjust and switch over and everybody
could start plugging into the battery bank.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, so that was super, super helpful as well. And
then of course we've already talked about the Apple Watch
and just in general being very very weather aware connected.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I'm gonna say connect. Yes, that's a great way to
because whether you have an Apple Watch or not, your
phone is a very connected device already. Carrying your phone
with you, having your phone with you. In the case
of her going to the coffee, she didn't have the
Apple Watch, probably good idea to have her phone with
her so that way she knows, like if there's a
tornado warning.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah, because I forgot to mention this, but the area
that we were in in the clubhouse that had the
coffee was completely destroyed. So if I hadn't had my
Apple Watch and I had stayed in there two minutes longer,
I would have been caught up in that whole mess,
which would not have been good.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
So those are our tips and tricks for you now.
Avoiding the hurricane obviously, that's the number one thing, avoiding
those circumstances as best you can. We always talked about like, hey, like,
especially with a hurricane, you could have enough forewarning to
get up and get out of there. And that's mostly true,
and I still think that that is one hundred percent
(22:27):
the best bet, But sometimes you got to look at
things and kind of analyze what is actually the best thing,
because you know.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Again, circumstance has a lot to do with it in
your situation, and every all the variables need to be
a factor in your decision making.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, you could one hundred percent leave, get stuck in traffic,
and now you're actually in the dead center rather than
being on the outer edge, and that's always a concern.
So just keep that in mind that getting away is
still number one priority, but sometimes you gotta adjust and
plan around.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It, and for things like tornadoes, for things like random
thunderstorms or hailstorms or other types of random weather events
that you could hit on the road doing full time
RV live or even doing trips when you're going and
you're you know, you do the weekend warrior thing that
you really can't account for. So that's where knowing that
(23:19):
you've got a storm shelter nearby, that's where planning and advance,
having a tank full of gas, things like that are
going to be really really helpful.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
And we called it out last week. We haven't we
haven't done anything. We haven't done any research on them,
but arvweather dot com Sure Route is their subscription service
that they provide, but they also provide a ton of
free resources to be able to look at everything that is,
all them different models that are out there. So I'm
giving them another shout out this week because we're talking
about weather and I think it's a really useful tool.
(23:48):
We're going to be checking it out, exploring it, kind
of experimenting with it ourselves, and maybe we even get
somebody from them to show up on the show at
one point.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah. Yeah, I've actually been using them all this week
when there's been you know a lot of that snowy
weather that was hitting for parts of the country and
things like that, and they were it was really really
comprehensive and that was just on their free side, like
before the paywall. Yeah, so it was. It was really
informative and kind of easy to read information. Plus it
really kind of helps to give some really good forecasts
(24:20):
that are free to ten days out that are fairly accurate.
They're straight from Noah, so really good stuff. I would
highly recommend checking them out, even if you just use
their free version, it's going to be a helpful tool
to use, especially with RB life.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I was really trying to think of a funny way
to make a joke about Noah Noah's arc weather, but
I couldn't, so I just saying it what all ran
through my head. It was funny in my head.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Hey, caepers, we'd love to stay connected. Follow us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook,
and YouTube at Wandering r V Bay. Thanks for joining us.
Let's do it again next weekend. Happy camping fie. You're
a nerd.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
You're a nerd.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
You're a nerd?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Why am I a nerd.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And you're a weather nerd? Maybe just a little bit,
maybe just a little bit. How many weather apps do
you have on your phone? Now?
Speaker 3 (25:13):
Be honest, Well, I have to still rvweather dot Com
is not an app, so that that one doesn't count, okay,
but then I have my radar, Samsung Weather, Carrot Weather.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
I think one more that I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
The name of. Yeah, yeah, I think there's at least
one more.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
And then rvweather dot com.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
You know you're tork.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Actually, for the longest time, I actually had the tab
up open in my browser to go to the n
oa's Novah's website so I could pull all those maps
up myself. And then I found out that rvweather dot com.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Was pulling and I was like, oh, that's a lot easier,
Like that's really handy, And
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Now why are your claps so loud
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