Our tent was destroyed 2 weeks ago in a storm in Holland (force 9-10). We arrived back to the campsite to find our tent covered in branches and two rips in the flysheet. The neighbours, who were all in caravans, said that they tried their best to hold onto the tent, but the pegs were just not up to it (Outwell pegging system). The poles amazingly hadn't snapped, but we just binned the tent (I'm now wondering whether it could have been repaired???). We weren't the only ones to lose our tent, but there was one in a neighbouring field that stood fast. My DCs said that it had thick straps attached to it as well as the usual guy lines, but I didn't get a chance to look at the pegs (we were just so busy trying to salvage our stuff from a sopping wet tent in the pouring rain!).
Now my question is this, apart from doing the obvious and taking the tent down before the storm hits (DH wouldn't hear of it, convinced the Outwell could withstand anything!), what should you do to protect a tent in a storm? The neighbours said that they thought the tent would fly away and I'm wondering whether the branches fell from the trees, or if they put them on the tent to stop it moving. If there were no trees on the site, would it be better to sit inside the tent to stop it moving or would there be other dangers in doing this? These are probably really dumb questions, but we are fairly new to camping and this was only our third trip! I've looked online to find out what pegs to use in a storm, but there seem to be so many types that I'm rather confused! I also haven't seen anything about straps for tents.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as we do seem to attract storms (we've had them all three times we've camped!).