MP's comment about enjoying storms but having his pants blown away by one bad one made me think this might be a good topic for a little humor or enlightenment.

  I like a good storm but only when I'm battened down dry and safe somewhere.
Never had any of my stuff blow away because I have a habit of tying everything off even when there is no storm in sight. A lesson learned from the misery of others.  ;) ;D ;D

This happened years ago when I was a tandem paddler with 3 other guys. We were on the St Croix River that runs along the border of Maine and New Brunswick Canada.

We were on a section of river that was about ½ mile wide. Basically a wind tunnel depending on weather conditions.

It was just starting to get buggy and when we stopped for the night one of the guys decided to pitch his brand new tent on the little sand beach take-out rather than up in the woods near the fire-pit area.

  We started making dinner as the rain clouds rolled in and the wind picked up. I asked him if he was sure he wanted to camp there and he assured me he was glad to be away from the bugs and had used all his stakes so his tent was good to go.

     Pretty soon there were whitecaps on the river and the wind was starting to howl. His tent was shaking pretty good and I asked him again if he wanted me to help him bring it up to the sheltered site?

     He was right in the middle of telling me he was getting “tired' of me second-guessing him when his tent tore loose and headed down the river like a runaway beach ball.

     I didn't want to go out in the storm, but he was going alone so I went with him. We put on PFD's and hugged the shoreline following the errant tent. About a mile down the river, it made a sharp dog leg and the tent was hung up on the shoreline.

     The thing that saved his bacon was he had it all zipped up and when it flipped upside down his sleeping bag and clothes went to the 'keel” and that kept the tent from filling with water.

     All his gear was intact, although soaking wet. He didn't even lose his tent stakes. They were the thin wire type, not meant for sand but had the loop on end so they stayed with the tent body/guy lines.

     We waited till the storm passed, loaded the tent in the canoe in one piece and paddled back to the campsite and hauled it up into woods. Dried his gear on the campfire and ALL had a good laugh at his expense.

     Needless to say, he learned his lesson but realized he was a very lucky guy. If not for that dog leg we would have never caught that tent until it reached the river's mouth on the Bay of Fundy.

Well since my comment helped inspire this thread for those that have not heard the story start reading this report under the third picture on 7/4/11.
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Figured I'd let this thread marinate a while before posting a buzz kill.
We visited the site on Basswood where the scout troupe was camped on the night of the big blow. It had been a couple of weeks since the tragedy but the site hadn't been touched since.
It was a humbling experience as you could see exactly what led up to the blow down. I really don't think anyone could have predicted that this could happen.
The thing that disturbed me the most was the evidence of the attempted rescue.
I can't imagine the terror these people endured.

In August of 2002 my thirteen-year-old son, Wes, and I endured repeated monstrous blows during a three day mega-storm.  We were hunkered down at the campsite on the southeast corner of the North/South corridor connecting the two tiers of Cirrus Lake.  As it turned out, it was a really bad choice of sites.  While exposure for "breezes" kept the bugs off, bugs became the least of our concerns.  Yikes, was that a bad spot!

It started with a violent thunderstorm in the middle of the night but then became a steady diet of 40mph winds with frequent gusts that went far higher.  As mentioned, it went on for nearly 3 days.  At times, 3-4 inch diameter trees were heard snapping all around us.  As the big blowdown of 1999 was fresh in my memory, I prepared for the worst.  I hauled my son out of the tent TWICE during a particularly bad stretch, heading directly to the windward shore & enduring stinging, wind-driven spray - both from the clouds and off the lake, in an attempt to avoid falling timber.  We would stay out there until I was satisfied the worst of the gusts had passed.

My son was far calmer about these matters than I was.  When I grabbed him a THIRD time to race to the windward shore, he just stared at me and refused to get up.  Instead, he said "Dad, can't we just sit here and finish playing cards?"  Somewhat reluctantly, I relented, and that's just what we did... played more card games.  I recall he had a cast on his wrist at the time.  I suspect he was hiding some really good cards in it that cast that he sorely wished to play.  In any case, he didn't wish to go out again.  Anyhow, we made out alright.

All during that 3 day blow I kept looking westward, hoping for a stretch of light blue sky to appear.  Across the lake on a peninsula on the southwest shore I noticed several campers holed up in what I know now to be a 5 Star campsite.  I was extremely envious of the wind protection those campers enjoyed.  Eventually, after all was said & done, I paddled by there and compared notes.  There was no contest.  Wes & I got the crap beat out of our camp and would have abandoned it, if we could have.  My trusted old canvas tent was ruined and had to be tossed afterward.  All the while, the guys just across the lake were having a gay old time and were merely "inconvenienced" because they couldn't get out to fish!

Ever since, whenever I visit that area, I grab THEIR campsite if it's available.  In fact, DentonDoc & I weathered a particularly nasty thunderstorm (60mph winds) at that very site this past July.  It was around about the same time frame as the storm Chaga is talking about.  Bad news stuff, that's for sure!  DD & I were forced to retreat to the deeper woods due to its ferocity and to avoid the sheets of water that were being blown perpendicular off of Cirrus Lake.

Quetico lakes can be tough places to be during tempests.  It's always a major relief to walk away unscathed and to breathe the fresh air of a post-storm sky.  It promotes humility and thankfulness!

Always best to evaluate your exposure to those west & northwest winds before setting up camp... no matter what the bugs or the view suggest!

Later,

Jimbo   8-) 

I know both those sites. I can imagine the stress of being exposed to days of high winds in the elevated site on the channel between upper and lower Cirrus.

A few years ago my son and I decided to enter late in the afternoon on Friday,  the day before our planned Saturday morning entry. We paddled across Nym lake in warm temperatures and with a light breeze on our backs. T-shirt weather, I call it. We set up camp on a long peninsula just east of the Nym portage Batchewaung lake. It was a nice site but we could hear the rumble of approaching thunder as wet set up the tent. When some extremely evil looking clouds clawed over the tree tops we began to look for large enough crevices in the bedrock to hunker down in. A strong and sustained gust blew through an nearly ripped out tent away, but it stayed anchored due to the guy ropes tied to trees, in anticipation of the approaching storm. We sheltered behind a big boulder near the water until the wind subsided. That night and all the next day the temperatures continued to drop which nearly led to a hypothermia incident, but that's another story. It's amazing how quickly the weather can change from pleasant and calm to windy, cold and wet.

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That pic looks almost like the storm clouds that came in when I was windbound for a day in the Narrows on the east end of Quetico Lake.

The only difference the clouds were ALL black.
I hope this topic helps educate any Newbie that hasn't seen how quick things can change up there.

All that water, narrow corridors to funnel the wind, it makes for some severe weather in a heartbeat.

Jimmar,

What a great pic!  Looks much like what approached DD & me last July.  You're right; some folks might not appreciate just how quickly conditions can change up there!

Jimbo   8-)

P.S.  There is a heavily-edited account of my adventure with DD last summer appearing in the just-released issue of the BWJ.  In about 6 months I'll place the unabridged version into db's "Stories" section, like I usually do.  It was a stormy yet rewarding trip... which might not have gone so well for me without a little help from my friend!  I sure wish I had had jimmar's pic for that story....

here is a shot where the clouds look more threatening, more like a claw

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That is an awesome shot 8-)

If I didn't know the source it almost appears the menacing cloud "claw" thunderhead was Photoshopped on the otherwise peaceful idyllic landscape.

No photoshop.  I don't know how the clouds show up in the reflection at the shoreline.

jimmar wrote on Dec 22^nd, 2016 at 3:39pm:

No photoshop.  I don't know how the clouds show up in the reflection at the shoreline.

I didn't mean to imply that YOU Photoshop, I just meant that IF you weren't familiar with the way weather can change so fast up there, you wouldn't believe you could have  two so diametrically opposing "weather" patterns at the same time.

Those clouds were rolling in pretty fast yet the water in the foreground is smooth as glass. A stark contrast for sure.

yeah that's really something to look at. one of those pictures you could stare at for a while. get's you thinking.  and. this thread helps to want to err on the safe side when the discussion comes up about 'should we go for it?'. and. not skimp tying stuff around camp down a bit better. and to keep my pants where they won't blow away.