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I have been living in the US for some time and I was surprised to see that these kinds of tents are pretty common now

enter image description here

I was skeptical about the effectiveness of this "partial" rain fly in case of (heavy) rain, but never experienced it.

The fly of the tent I am thinking about looks like the picture on each side of the tent.

So my question is : how much does this kind of rain fly protect you from the rain? Can anyone share her/his experience on that point?

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  • I haven't used them. But looks like a poor protection against rain. Especially when you have winds to direct the rain towards your entrance.
    – Ricketyship
    Commented Feb 8, 2014 at 2:13

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I have camped in a tent with a similar rain fly - it was fine in gentle rain, and I found it amusing in a force 8 gale with lashing rain - because it leaked about 11 litres of rain into the tent overnight (so my middle daughter ended up a bit damp)

My wife wasn't so keen, as she had never camped in storms before. I found it okay - if you don't like water in your tent, then don't get one of these.

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It's hard to know what it is about that picture you consider partial. Is it the triangular opening through which you can see the door? Or, more significantly in my opinion, the fact that the fly doesn't come down to the ground?

My tent is an Alpine Meadows. It looks like this:

enter image description here

(picture from a classified ad.)

I have been using it for over 30 years. We don't set it up facing into where we think the storm might come from, and about 20 years ago we added a vestibule on the front (but not the back) so we could have more room inside as our family grew. We have never had a "tent is flooding" rain problem - sometimes when we wake up we find a little water has come in, but not a lot. It's mostly through seams anyway because we forget to seam seal some years.

One year the kids were in separate tents and one of theirs flooded so much we had to bring her in with us, where it was dry. So I would not be too concerned that a tent like this can't stay dry.

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  • Thanks. It is true the picture is not clear enough. The fly of the tent I am thinking about has the same shape on each side of the tent. I'll edit the question to make it clearer.
    – Martin Van der Linden
    Commented Feb 11, 2014 at 18:25
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Well by the looks of it, It'll hold up in a bid of rain, but no downpour or any hard wind.
Plus side on this tent is that the rain fly will keep some direct sunlight of of the inner tent.
And it looks like the front "door" of the tent is made of something that might be water proof.

Now what you're gonna want to do (and you should do this periodically with any tent) is use a water proofing spray.
This will put a protective layer on the material and help with carrying away water.

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  • Thanks for your input :) I would still like to hear from someone who experienced rainy circumstances with this kind of tents.
    – Martin Van der Linden
    Commented Feb 9, 2014 at 15:09

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