Misting phenom

[cyclebum]

Anybody experienced this? Where the force of a heavy rain causes water to penetrate the fly as a mist causing everything to get damp inside. Any ideas how to prevent.

I'd like to hear from anybody who's tent camped when it rained really heavy to find out if this is fairly common with lightweight tents, or not.

[paddleboy17]

I don't know if this is what you are seeing or not.

You exhale warm moist air.  This air rises and hits the rain fly.  What happens next, depends on how much warm most air there is and the shape of your rain fly.  I have had the rain fly frost over.  I would expect a well pitched fly to shed water off to the sides.  I have never spent more than a day in a tent though.  I suspect that getting some air flow would help.

[DaveB]

The cold and very hig humidity that accompanies the storm may be causing condensation on the inner wall of the tent from your breath or just from the humidity in the air.  When the rain drops hit the cloth, they force the water already on the inside to pop off and it appears the rain went completely through the fabric. 

[cyclebum]

That's 3 votes for condensation, one coming from CG. I'll take it, relieved it wasn't a fabric defect.

Has only happened once which gives credance to that idea. Been in a number of ts and stayed dry. Now I don't have to engineer a 'fix' which was getting a bit tedious, would have looked terrible, and caused more condensation.

[staehpj1]

I doubt that you need it in this case, but for old tents whose waterproofing is shot, polycoat is supposed to be the ticket.  Eureka recommended it for my aging tent.  I decided to replace the tent with a lighter one so i didn't try it.
http://www.aquaseal.com/polycoat.html