How Windy Is To Windy?

[megasupermagnum]

I live in South Dakota. 20 mph sustained winds is pretty much a weekly occurrence here.

I use a Warbonnet superfly tarp. I use no shock cords or anything special. I use only paracord. I don't claim paracord is the best, but it works good. The Warbonnet tarps have plastic tie outs that break if it gets too much force. I didn't loose any until I had a really bad night where I didn't realize there was a bad thunderstorm coming in. I'm sure the gusts were over 70 mph, it was pretty scary. The tarp did fine, one corner plastic tie out let loose, but no big deal. Thankfully it died about as fast as it came, it could have been much worse of that storm was hours long.

Heres some tips I learned over the years out here. First, do everything you can to get out of the wind. Its really surprising how calm a 6' deep ditch can be. On the plains, the bottoms of the drainages is like a whole other world. It can be dead calm, and 50 foot above can be howling. Around lake superior is hilly enough, you could probably do better to find a spot out of the wind, even if it means you can't get that lake shore view.

I wouldn't worry about the tarp to much. These tarps are popular for a reason, they actually work. There is no wind situation I would go without a tarp. That's the whole point of the tarp is to keep you out of the wind, rain, and snow. I'd rather go tarpless in -20F winter than tarpless in 20mph summer winds.

I do not bring stakes with me. In the summer I mostly use sticks. I good sized 3/4" sharpened stick stays in the ground pretty good. A trick I learned, as stupidly simple as it sounds, is to double stake. I literally put two stakes in each corner in an X pattern. I rarely do this, but when I know the weather is bad, these will not pull out. Alternatively what I do in the winter when the ground is frozen is I use rocks or logs. If one rock isn't enough, or you can't lift a really big rock, I just stack multiple rocks together. Sometimes in really heavy brush, such as you tend to find in NE Minnesota, I simply tie out to the base of brush. Even a small bush is just about impossible to pull out all its roots and everything. Maybe it isn't the best leave no trace practice, but I've not damaged anything yet.

I've tried the center pole, and I've tried it with the outside tie outs tied up. I don't bother with either anymore. They are mostly just to give more room inside, they seem to perform worse in poor weather. The tie outs especially just create the perfect place for rain to gather. I run my tarp normal, just the tarp, semi-narrow. I guess one other little trick is hang nice an low. Normally I like to hang pretty high, like 3' or 4' off the ground, but in strong wind, I'll get the hammock as low as I can without dragging, maybe 1' off the ground. I also run the tarp as low on the hammock as I can, where in better conditions I'll hang it higher. This is the same with cold weather. If you have decent snow, hang low, and you can even bank snow to the tarp to almost make a seal. When things get really bad, the tarp blows in on one side and the hammock supports it. Setup so your feet are laying on the windy side, and you get used to the flapping noise.

[Spaced]

This all got me thinking. How windy is to windy for hanging a tarp? What could you or would you do in a similar super windy situation?

wool clothes, light wool blanket, uqp or a foil blanket to lie in in lieu of downy goodness. maybe even a bivi bag. i would rather sleep in rain, than lie awake wondering if that thing coming over the mountains is going to be the one to ruin my night. beyond that, points of redundancy to make sure when it breaks, it's easily replaced.

wind is not a big problem in a hammock unless you're expecting rain imo, because you remove most of the dangers tenters and tarpers have, if you just roll up and hope the heavens don't decide to open (rogue widow makers not withstanding). i say this having suffered failure due to wind just last night. my mistake was keeping my tarp up when the rain wasn't strong enough to warrant it. Of course, if you naturally don't enjoy stormy weather no-tarp in such conditions may not work...but in that instance I vote for redundancies like d-rings or bungee attachments, and hope they failsafe your gear that is harder to replace. Other than that, camp near infrastructure where possible; walls, dense forestation cliff bases or abandoned buildings...and hope for the best