Class A in Florida during hurricane season

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Cass Sumrall

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 5, 2012
Posts
136
I am considering purchasing a Itasca 30T or Winnebago 30T for part time use & plan to keep it outdoors beside my house. I wonder what others have experienced with Class A's of that size in hurricanes. Are they heavy enough to stay put or do they blow over? Any experience would be appreciated.

 
What Seilerbird says!

Violent thunderstorms are fairly common in tropical Flroida and I've never seem my coach rock around. It's in the lot next to the house but still fairly sheltered by trees and other houses. We are usually traveling during hurricane season, so have no direct experience with that effect on the coach. Surely it would rock, but not real likely to tip over.

Frankly, if a hurricane came direct at me, possible wind damage to the coach would be the least of my concerns. If I elected not to leave town for whatever reason, I would just make sure the RV insurance was paid and do my worrying about the house and our persons.
 
Consider that your motorhome is an ugly airfoil. It will attack the air going forwards at 70 mph across its 8 ft nose without much issue, although there will be considerable resistance.

However, if you apply that 70 mph wind directly to the side of the motorhome with its 35 to 40 foot side area, something is going to give.

In your case, next to your house, it's going to be less likely to get a full blast of air and it's going to be hard to make it do anything but shake in its boots.

Frankly, I would be far more concerned about the tornadoes that are spawned from hurricanes since their winds speeds are so high and the flying debris becomes your enemy.

So I don't think I would worry as much about it turning over as much as I would worry about it becoming a pin cushion for all the debris in the storm.
 
Wish we could be gone for all of hurricane season, but that's a way off for us.

My experience in living in FL most of my life is that by the time you know a hurricane is likely to hit your area its too late to point it north & head out - the roads will be clogged & you end up trapped on the road in the hurricane. So it would have to be able to sit it out in place. I wonder if tiedowns would help any or is a 20,000 pound vehicle too heavy to be likely to be moved or overturned by 150 MPH winds?
 
We were in Bedford ,Mass. last fall when Sandy came through. Supposedly we had strong tropical storm winds with hurricane force gusts. Our motorhome rock and rolled a lot but had no damage . We did pull in  two of our slides but left the one in the bedroom out. Our main reason for putting them in was to spare the toppers from all of that wind. Now we were not in the center of a hurricane and it was definitely an experience but we survived just fine. I have to add that what scared us more than anything was the fact that a lot of the other people at Hanscom  Fam Camp were there long term and had a lot of things outside and for the most part they did not pick them up . We were scared of damage from flying barbecues and lawn chairs which there were quite a few. .....Alan
 
Nothing that is movable is too heavy to withstand 150 mph winds. Or even 120. Most buildings won't either if they catch the brunt of it. But up to around 90 or so it's probably not going to tip enough to go over.
 
We were here in 2004 for Hurricane Charley.  We had 150 mph winds at our house and at our boat about 400 yards away.  We had $40,000 damage to the boat and the about the same to the house.
The photo below is one of the RV parks here where the wind was about 100 mph.  Mobile homes (aka RVs) are magnets for tornadoes and hurricanes and they don't stand up well.
 

Attachments

  • Hurricane Charley RV.jpg
    Hurricane Charley RV.jpg
    111.7 KB · Views: 70
  • Hurricane Charley RV 2.jpg
    Hurricane Charley RV 2.jpg
    52.8 KB · Views: 65
  • Hurricane Charley RV.jpg
    Hurricane Charley RV.jpg
    111.7 KB · Views: 61
If it were me I would have my MH packed and ready to roll.  With the notice of anything over a mild cat 1or if they even hinted about evacuations I would head away from the path and come back after it was gone.  At least if the worst happened we would still have a clean dry place to live.
 
Bago said:
We were here in 2004 for Hurricane Charley.  We had 150 mph winds at our house and at our boat about 400 yards away.  We had $40,000 damage to the boat and the about the same to the house.
The photo below is one of the RV parks here where the wind was about 100 mph.  Mobile homes (aka RVs) are magnets for tornadoes and hurricanes and they don't stand up well.


Some RV parks require tie down straps, some don't! Go figure?

Scott in Aracida, FL. for the winter!  :)
 
This is a tough question to answer since there are so many variables. Being out in the open where you will see higher wind speed will be much different than a wooded or densely built area of homes. Tied downs could only help but if you see 150 mph wind damage will be so widespread the RV damage will seem minor. Flying debris will beat the heck out of everything, those barrel tiles on the roofs of so many neighborhoods do incredible damage.

I also live in FL year round and consider the RV to be a big asset in terms of flexibility. It makes a good fuel supply for my generator for storms that are not likely to destroy everything but may leave the power out for a week or more. We live about 5 blocks from the Gulf of Mexico so if something like 120 mph or more is likely to come near us we are out. Heading north if done too late will probably be a worse option for us than heading to the east coast due to traffic. The in-laws live near Stuart on the east coast so that is one option for us when there is a gulf hurricane. If there is an east coast hurricane they come to our place. Ugh! What can I say.

From some of the past storms I know that I don't want to be any where near the damage zone for at least two weeks. There is all kinds of unsurly stuff that goes on and way to few police to deal with it, if they could be notified and get to you. The RV can take you away from all that ugliness and provide a reasonable place to stay for a while.
 
Having lived in Florida for 35+ years, I think the hurricane danger in Florida is far overrated. Nobody wants to be in one, but nobody wants a tornado or an earthquake or a forest fire either.  In all those years we've had some patio screens knocked down, some tree limbs broken (get that in thunderstorms too), and had some water damage when a 10 foot tall ornamental tree got pushed over and broke a water pipe in the yard. In that same time frame we've had a tree blown down on our RV site in Hershey, PA, have been forced to evacuate a campground in Iowa due to flooding, had a tornado go near by in Alabama, and got caught in a freak blizzard in Montana.

Weather can and will happen wherever you are. You have to respect it, no matter what state you are in.
 
Great comments - very helpful.

I wish it was easy to escape them but living in SE Florida, by  the time you know there is a serious threat, its too late to leave - you get trapped on the few north/south ways out of Florida & risk getting caught on the road in the hurricane. We have always opted to stay & ride them out. I suspect we will be forced to do the same with a motor home in the yard, not being able to just leave FL for the entire hurricane season.
 

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
134,552
Posts
1,431,370
Members
140,125
Latest member
Schwabelectric
Back
Top Bottom