Yesterday was another rainy day. We spent most of the day indoors. There was a short break from the rain around midday. Donna took advantage of the break by taking a walk on East Lake Goodwin Road. I drove Alana’s car to Costco and picked up a few items.

While I was out, I thought about wind. Although it’s been raining for two days, we haven’t had much wind. Wind can be a powerful and devastating force. This was demonstrated yesterday when a tornado touched down in a Virginia campground. RVs were overturned and trees were blown down. Two people were killed and more than 30 were injured.

I also saw a post on Facebook yesterday about a marina destroyed by a storm. There was a photo posted showing part of the dock on top of a boat.

The reason I was thinking about wind was because I left our awning out while Donna and I were away from the coach. Wind can quickly destroy an awning and damage an RV. I usually pull the awning in if we’re going to be away from the coach. I’ve become too complacent about it. With the rain, the awning is a nice convenience. It keeps the area around the door dry, making it nicer to exit and enter the coach while it’s raining.

Our awning is an AE WeatherPro power awning. The awning is electrically operated and opens or closes with the touch of a rocker switch. It isn’t hard to operate.

I prefer not to close the awning while it’s wet. If I have to close it while it’s wet, I’ll open it at the earliest opportunity to allow it to dry and prevent mildew. Although the fabric of the awning is mildew-resistant, dust and dirt can build up on the fabric and quickly create mildew if it’s rolled up wet.

The AE WeatherPro awning is supported by articulated arms. The design is clever. The support arm has a joint (the manual calls it a knee) about two and a half feet away from the coach. There’s an air spring that maintains pressure on the arm to hold the awning open and pull the fabric tight.

If the wind catches the awning, it billows up like a sail as the arm articulates at the knee (maybe they should call it an elbow), compressing the air spring. Once the wind passes, the air spring extends the awning back into position. This is a clever “bend don’t break” approach.

Linkage supporting the AE WeatherPro awning

Our old coach had a manually operated awning. The arms were rigid and locked into place. I’ve seen people tie down or hang weights on the ends of the arms to keep them from banging around in the wind. In my opinion, if it’s windy enough to need tie downs or weights, the awning should probably be pulled in.

With a manual awning, I would extend one arm out higher than the other. This caused the awning to tilt to one side. When it rained, water would run off the lower end of the awning instead of pooling on the fabric.

The AE WeatherPro has different spring rates on the air springs. When water pools on the fabric, the spring on the left arm (the one with the lower spring rate), collapses up to nine inches from the weight of the water and the water runs off the left end of the awning. This happened many times over the last two days!

The AE WeatherPro comes with a wind sensor. This device will automatically retract the awning if sustained winds above 18mph are detected (that’s the factory default setting and it’s adjustable). Our wind sensor was turned off when we bought the coach. I’ve read many complaints on forums about erratic wind sensor operation, so I never bothered to activate it.

After thinking it through, I think I’ll activate the wind sensor and see how it works. The AE WeatherPro manual says that erratic operation is most likely due to an obstruction blocking or partially blocking the sensor.

That’s what I know about RV awnings.

Last night, Donna thawed a package of sea food medley, marinated the seafood for five minutes in lemon juice and then sauteed it with garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and white wine. She served it over whole wheat pasta. With a little grated parmesan and fresh basil, this simple meal was delicious.

Lemon-garlic seafood medley

This morning, I had written about 500 words of this post when it disappeared from my computer. I don’t know how it happened or why I couldn’t call up an autosaved version of it. All I could do was start over. Oh, well. I won’t let that ruin my day. Sunshine is in the forecast for today and the rest of the weekend.