Have you ever been to a Shelter?

Emergency disaster shelters are often School Gyms which are more designed for basketball games during rain or snow storms and School Assemblies than anything else. Usually they are heated so people won't freeze and they have about 100 or more cots for people to sleep on and they bring in food for people to eat. So, basically you have no privacy at all, kids are screaming or crying all the time 24 hours a day and it is very difficult to sleep there but you are usually fed and watered and warm even though there is almost always some crying and mayhem going on 24 hours a day.

Hopefully the Gym is connected to boys and girls showers and bathrooms so basic necessities can be covered in people. But, privacy is not there until you leave for some other location like a motel or someone's home (after your home burns down) or you are allowed to return to your area where hopefully your home didn't burn down (but all your neighbors did) so they are gone.

So, even though temperatures before the storm were down to about 31 degrees in that Walmart Chico parking lot, you can see why people want at least the privacy of a tent so they might be able to at least sleep quietly at night even when it's 31 degrees outside mornings which usually means inside the tent it is at most 40 or 50 inside just from breathing inside a tent.

However, I don't know how many of you have been in a tent in the rain. The problem is you usually want to be on a little slope and then trench around your tent so the water doesn't wet your tent from the ground up. So, being anywhere flat usually won't work because it is going to puddle usually where your tent is and wet everyone and everything inside from the ground up. Also you need a waterproof ground cloth so water isn't absorbed up into the tent either directly from the ground.

So, there is both an art and a science to being in a tent in the rain and most people prefer not to be in tents in the rain unless they are very skilled indeed at picking the right slope with the right tent and rain fly with the right ground cloth and equipment to stay dry.

And then there is another technique of putting cots in your tent so your bed stays dry above the tent floor and not worrying about a wet tent floor. So, like I said there is an art and a science to staying dry in a tent in the rain. So, theoretically you could keep everything dry in a tent just by having enough cots in the tent to set everything on. But, if your tent is a backpacking tent your tent is very thin and the legs of the cot are going to make holes in the bottom of your tent. But then, if you are backpacking you aren't going to be carrying cots usually anyway.

But, if your tent is a heavy canvas thing too heavy for backpacking cots might be just fine to keep you and everything dry along with a good ground cloth and a little slope to trench around.