Having spent years in Oklahoma and traveled to many places, I've seen my fair share of windy locales. I have to say I have never seen the wind blow like it does in South Texas. Although Chicago sometimes is called the "Windy City" in reality it's not even close. Dodge City takes the prize with Amarillo a close second. Last night, and continuing through today, we had sustained winds of over 30 mph with gusts in the 40's. The motor home was rocking and the wind howled and swirled outside. At "oh dark thirty" we stumbled out of bed to the cacophony of the slide out awning extending, flapping and retracting with the wind. It's not a simple process to retract the slide out because we try to make our little coach a home. Therefore a lot of stuff has to repositioned first. Those of you that live without slide outs have my admiration-I don't know what we'd do without the extra space. I'm sitting across from the couch in my recliner and I can touch it with my feet. Too cramped for me. But, I digress. In the close to six months we've been down here, the main awning has been out over a period of days maybe twice. And that was when we were in a spot where we could tie it to a fence post. Lately, we rarely, if ever, extend the awning. In contrast, one summer in Missouri we left it out most of the time. I have tried the tie downs, but in this windy environment they just slow you down when you have to stow the awning. It's not mentioned often but; a part of Gate Guarding in South Texas is managing and dealing with the wind. You may want to check out this website which shows the extremes of weather we have in the U.S.-how about 134 degrees in Death Valley, California and -80 degrees in Prospect Creek, Alaska. Or that Nowata, Oklahoma got to thirty below zero last winter (2011) Fascinating!
http://web2.airmail.net/danb1/usrecords.htm
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