Hail July 07, 2020, 08:04:50 am I do a lot of traveling in the Midwest. They get a lot of hail. I assume the siding dents, is it a major repair to fix? Lynn
Re: Hail Reply #1 – July 07, 2020, 10:32:15 am Quote from: rabbitdiesel1 - July 07, 2020, 08:04:50 amI do a lot of traveling in the Midwest. They get a lot of hail. I assume the siding dents, is it a major repair to fix? LynnHere are some statistics: Facts + Statistics: Hail | IIIWhat every Texas RV owner needs to know about RV Hail Damage Repair | Coach...Chris
Re: Hail Reply #2 – July 07, 2020, 11:14:26 am I would think that the LD's aluminum roof, the AC shroud, the vent covers, and the front of the fiberglass overhang would be more vulnerable to hail damage than the sides of the motorhome. I've been in a few hailstorms in parts of the west and had no damage, but the hailstones were small, not the golf-ball or larger size chunks that some places, e.g., Texas, may experience. Maybe those whose rigs have been slammed by hailstones may offer damage reports ?
Re: Hail Reply #3 – July 07, 2020, 11:54:01 am I have not been in serious hail in our Lazy Daze, but did encounter golf ball to softball sized hail while trying to avoid a tornado in our Lance Camper. We were in a wide open plain area and had nowhere to hide, so I drove in the opposite direction of the moving tornado and eventually out of the hail.When we emerged from the storm, our camper top and overhead area looked like I had parked it in a golf driving range. It was covered with one to two inch dents. I suspect that the corrugated aluminum skin of the Lance is less thick than the aluminum skin on the Lazy Daze, but it is easier to replace as well. The skin on the side of the Lance has plywood backing and the roof has heavy plywood under the aluminum sheet roof. Fortunately, we didn't lose our windshield, which I attribute to the extended front overhang.Avoid tornados.Harold
Re: Hail Reply #4 – July 07, 2020, 12:04:49 pm Through the years, many LDs graced our driveway.Some of them had experienced severe hail storms that broke the roof vents, escape hatch and A/C cover. Surprisingly, I never saw a damaged solar panel.The aluminum roofs on some LDs appear as if someone, with a ball-peen hammer, had spent hours pounding away on the roof, with thousands of deep dents. The sides normally escape serious damage, hail usually falls straight down.Windshields, mirrors and side windows have been broken.Any sheet metal repair on a LD is expensiveLarry
Re: Hail Reply #5 – July 07, 2020, 07:07:18 pm We were in a short burst (10 min or so) of golf ball sized hail with only one ball of ice very 6" square or so - e.g. not a heavy hailstorm. It broke a fan vent cover (likely was brittle from age) but no other issues or marks. Jane
Re: Hail Reply #6 – July 08, 2020, 09:23:11 am We were in hail storm in San Marcos, TX at a Lazy Daze Rally. The hail measured 3 1/2". We were luckily parked partially under a large tree. We did incur several dents on the roof that were significant enough for the insurance company to total the roof. We took our MB to the Mother Ship for evaluation. They determined that the damage was cosmetic and we kept the check. By the time we sold our MB about 6 years later, the dents did not matter in the price.
Re: Hail Reply #7 – July 08, 2020, 10:10:48 am "We were in hail storm in San Marcos, TX..."RossI know how you folks in Texas like to do everything 'large' but hail should be low on the list. I was in your hometown of Fredericksburg when I met my 1st Texas Hail Storm. Sitting in my Honda Civic nearly straight across the street from the Nimitz Museum, it sure made a big racket but did no damage. My LD was in the nearby RV Park, partially under a tree.
Re: Hail Reply #8 – July 08, 2020, 11:58:02 am On our trip to eastern Canada last year we were concerned about encountering severe weather, especially hail, in the plains states (going) and the midwest and southeast (on our way home). Our strategy was to do everything we could to avoid it.I'd do some research on the National Weather Service Web site. They have several tools specifically designed to help you predict where severe weather will break out, when and just how severe it will be. Reviewing these regularly, certainly daily and sometimes more often, allowed us to plan ahead to avoid or delay travel in areas where the NWS was predicting severe weather.I also recommend the MyRadar cell phone app. It does an excellent job of showing severe weather via radar images and NWS warnings in real time. It's extremely quick to refresh. And while it requires a data connection that generally wasn't a problem in the areas of the country where severe weather is most likely. On several occasions I used MyRadar to navigate around severe weather in our vicinity, with the phone on the dashboard, much like a pilot might use weather radar to fly around storms.By using these tools we were able to adjust our travel plans on several occasions to avoid severe weather and to navigate around what we couldn't plan for in advance. Of course that required some flexibility and a willingness to modify our plans, missing out on some places we'd otherwise planned to visit. Not much of a sacrifice when the alternative was possible extensive damage to our motorhome.An added benefit of this approach is peace of mind. The times I've found myself unavoidably in the midst of severe weather I've found it nerve-wracking wondering if and when it will move in on us and what the consequences will be. 3 Likes
Re: Hail Reply #9 – July 09, 2020, 10:49:13 am For convective weather, go to the source...https://www.spc.noaa.gov/. Outlooks are on the right side of the page. For breaking weather, check the MDs, Mesoscale Discussions. You may not understand what they are talking about, but you will get the idea. You can jump to many areas of severe weather information from this page, including models, climatology, observations including radar. Radar is your best short-term tool...one to two hours. Whatever radar app you use, make sure it has some sort of hail-related output.Keep in mind, that thunderstorms are small-scale disturbances in the atmosphere both in space and time. They are quite difficult to model. So modeling essentially predicts parameters for thunderstorm production. Once thunderstorms are underway, radar is then the key. Thunderstorms act to re-balance the atmosphere. They disperse heat and mass, just like any storm, just on a small scale.ChuckRetired National Weather Service Met 3 Likes
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