Missed It By That Much!
We Will Rebuild !
It’s only a scratch. A few tie-wraps and some Gorilla Tap and that’ll buff right out.
Well, we almost made it.
For each of last three years we’ve gate guarded, we’ve lost a canopy sometime during the year.
Year 1
Year 2
Couldn’t find a photo
Year 3
But this year, since we only have 5 days left for this year, I thought we had managed to dodge a bullet.
WRONG!
Although running a little late, Mother Nature finally caught up with us this morning. After riding out the high wind gusts all night, (according to the Weather Channel, 45 to 55mph) I finally gave up and went inside. I had been watching the heavy squall line running southwest to northeast west of us. But it was also sliding sideways in our direction. And as it did, the wind gusts increased even more.
So I moved all the electronics and other stuff into the rig and the truck, and then garbage-bagged the heaters, and anything else not waterproof. Then about 5:30 I retreated inside the rig to ride it out.
At that time I wasn’t really worried about the canopy since it had braved the high winds all night, but I didn’t want to be out there when it was raining sideways. I had even added a couple of extra tie-downs using 220# rope, one to the tow bar attachment on front of the truck, and the other to the hitch on the rear of the RV. I figured if the rig and the truck didn’t stay in place, I wasn’t going to worry about the canopy.
About 6 am the bottom fell out with a loud WHOOMP! All at once it was coming down so hard that I could just barely see the truck 10 feet away. We even had some hail for the first few minutes. The wind gusts were now rocking and rolling the rig back and forth with no let up. I finally went to bed about 6:30, with the canopy still holding its own.
Even in the storm we were still getting the water tankers coming in and out. Jan would waved them in from the door, and try to get their tag numbers on the way out. But usually it was just tanker at 8:05, tanker out at 8:25.
Jan said the canopy went down somewhere between 7 and 7:30, and a little bit later we lost the floodlights and the bell alarm as water got into some of the connections and popped the GFCI on the generator.
I was back up about 11 and we were going through lulls as the bands of rain passed over us. About this time a truck that I didn’t recognize pulled up so I ran outside since it was only drizzling at the time. Found out that it was the advance guy for the workover rig that’s coming in tomorrow.
Well that was a surprise since flowback wasn’t supposed to be finished up until Thursday or Friday. But it looks like they’re getting an early start. Told the guy they picked a hell of a day for it. He agreed and said that driving over from Longview he had trouble just seeing the road in front of him.
The storm had pretty much died out by 5pm so I went outside to survey the damage and try to figure out what happened. And it quickly became obvious what caused the canopy to go down.
All four of the 12” metal had been pulled sideways out of the now soggy ground, leaving only the 220# test rope holding the canopy against the wind. And at some point it had snapped like a strand of spaghetti. I figure it must have been a big gust that did it, since a steady wind of enough strength to do that would completely shredded the tarp, and it was still pretty much intact.
I also found the ground littered with these connectors.
These are what holds the cross braces of the canopy frame together. In some cases the bolt snapped, but in a couple of others it looks like the bolt threads were just stripped out.
Wow! That was some wind.
That’s about it for today. We’re working out of the truck for tonight, and tomorrow I’ll see if I can pop the canopy back into place.
We’ll see.
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Thought for the Day:
“Stupidity has a certain charm – ignorance does not.” – Frank Zappa
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