Along with flashlights, campfire equipment and hiking sticks, an item I really couldn’t wait to buy was a NOAH Weather radio. Many RVers in blogs recommended it, so I figured it was must-have gear. Little did I know that it was a piece of equipment that had to be manually programmed in every spot you were in, and this was at the County level as opposed to a zip code.
Upon watching several videos (one of the best linked here) I tried to incorporate the Midland in to my routine. But there is a phrase I remember from an old job I had in selling mobile software solutions: for every menu button you push, you lose half of your users. In other words, if you have to go through a series of 10 – 15 – 20 menu selections on a non-user friendly interface, the likelihood of it being used diminishes quickly. So the Midland sits in a drawer, batteries removed for that day in the future when I may ever try it again.
My National Weather Service / NWS app is a great and easy way to monitor both the immediate daily weather where I’m parked as well as providing a preview of coming attractions at the places I plan on going to in the near term. As I made my way from California this past week I set up all the towns I planned on stopping at in the journey. I soon realized that I was heading in to a snow storm in Flagstaff in a few days, so I then extended my initial travel day to 480 miles in order to beat that snow storm (I normally like to drive 250 to 350 miles per day). Then there were sub-freezing days forecast in Albuquerque and Amarillo, so I loaded up on propane in anticipation of significant furnace use during the night in order to both stay warm and prevent the water pipes in the RV from freezing.
So instead of reaching my campground in Texas this weekend, I am 4 to 5 days behind due to weather. This doesn’t bother me in the least since I learned the hard way in December when I did not pay close attention to the weather along the Tehachapi pass in California, had to endure a 6 hour traffic snarl to go 40 miles and then near midnight arrived at my campground and got stuck in the snow. Flexibility, taking your time and planning to your weather forecast will make the RV journey a far better one.
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