You may have noticed it’s been raining a lot. And if you’ve been a part of the Flipside community since, oh, 2015, you might have less-than-fond memories of the effects that rain can have on your experience at Flipside.
But we’ve learned a lot about dealing with rain, as individuals and as an organization.
Here are some steps the Flipside organization has already taken to be better prepared:
- Laid reinforced pullouts at Gate and Greeters to improve traffic flow
- Reinforced roads all around
- Identified low spots where people shouldn’t camp
- Identified good spots for RVs
- Streamlined traffic flow
- Organized a volunteer vehicle-recovery team
If it looks like we’ll be facing constant, heavy rain that will cause serious problems, here are some additional steps the organization will take:
- Install and monitor water-level gauges at the river
- Monitor traffic at Gate and post regular updates about wait times
- Lay in extra road base to reinforce low spots on the roads
- Take additional ad-hoc measures to facilitate traffic flow.
- Make a go/no-go call for the event the Saturday before.
There are things you can do too, if it looks like rain will cause serious problem:
- Bring rain boots
- Bring tire chains or other traction aids
- Double-check that your camping gear is watertight
- Greeters may have special instructions when you arrive. Follow those instructions.
- If we need to do anything special for Exodus, we’ll get word out on site. Follow those instructions too.
- Avoid peak gate hours. There’s a graph of average gate traffic below.
- Try not to arrive right when gate is closing, especially if there’s a long wait.
- Bring a good sense of humor.
We can’t say that weather won’t ruin your Flipside. We can say that people have had amazing Flipside experiences even in the worst weather, so don’t let the rain stop you.
