By Barbara A. Schmitz
Dean Gilderoy, of Scottsdale, Arizona, thought he was prepared for Friday night’s storm in Oshkosh.
“I had staked down as much as I could, and was watching the storm come in,” he said Saturday, as he tried to dry out his belongings before another storm came through Oshkosh. “But with the first gust of wind, my tent pole broke.”
His tent went down with him and his belongings inside. Gilderoy, EAA 851933, said he scurried out of the tent, and got his gear into his plane so it wouldn’t get wet. And that’s where he slept — in his 1977 Beechcraft Baron.
“I was lucky I was by myself so there was room for me to sleep. It was actually quite comfortable,” he said.
About 2 inches of rain fell on Oshkosh late Friday night and early Saturday morning, accompanied by winds gusting up to 70 mph. Besides a few overturned port-a-potties, bleachers, and signs, there was little damage to the grounds, planes, or structures on the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh grounds.
Saturday’s storm started late morning and delayed many of the mass arrivals. But with another 2 to 2½ inches of rain, it also meant the very wet grounds became covered with pools of standing water, reminiscent of 2010’s event nicknamed Sploshkosh.
Gilderoy said it is almost prophetic that his tent broke. “I’ve been through a lot of storms in Oshkosh in this tent and thought about buying a new one before I came,” he said. Now it was no longer an option. It was a necessity.
Others weren’t quite as lucky. Some slept in bathrooms, others in the EAA Aviation Museum, which they opened up to all campers as weather warnings blasted over the PA sitewide.
Max Nerheim, EAA 1104953, and his son, Thomas, of Phoenix, Arizona, abandoned their tent and took refuge in the nearby bathrooms and shower rooms in the North 40. Nerheim said their tent was full of water, but their gear stayed relatively dry since they packed most things in garbage bags, including their sleeping bags. They, too, were going shopping for a new, better tent Saturday.
Nerheim said at one point, about 35 people were in the bathrooms, but by 1 a.m., only about three remained. They put their sleeping bags down in the shower room and slept.
“It was fine,” Thomas said, about sleeping in the bathrooms. “It was actually pretty comfortable, and it was warm and dry.”
Jake Speidel, EAA 670366, of Carmel, California, said he was at first happy to park his plane so close to the bathrooms in the North 40. But after the rain Friday and Saturday, it was evident they were in a low spot, make that a very low spot. In fact, their spot had become “lake property,” he joked.
But Speidel and his friends, Brian and Laurie Westover, and their son, Luke, 9, of York, Maine, were lucky in that they had family camping in RVs on the AirVenture grounds. They spent Friday night in the RVs and planned to do the same on Saturday night.
Their tents didn’t handle the storm too well either, with one ripped rainfly jammed into the plane’s aileron. “It’s the 10th time I’ve come and the 10th time I was tenting, but this is the only time my tent was destroyed,” Speidel said.
This was the Westovers’ first trip to AirVenture and they weren’t going to let a little rain, make that a lot of rain, dampen their enthusiasm.
“This is waterfront property,” joked Brian Westover, “that you’d have to pay a lot of money for anywhere else.”
But despite the wet conditions, most visitors didn’t seem to mind. “This just makes AirVenture more of an adventure,” Nerheim said.
Thankfully, the weather adventure should be over soon. A flash flood warning was in effect through 10 p.m. Saturday. But the rest of the week’s forecast called for mainly sunny skies and temperatures hovering around 80 degrees.