Flytyer said:
Gomer said:
Thanks a lot Larry, last time I did some Q and it rained the temp seemed to drop a lot quickly, perhaps it was coincidence though, it only rained for a very short time.
I will give it a go and see what happens.
That had nothing to do with the rain. If that happened in a WSM then there is another big problem worth discovering. I have shut my WSM down and gone to work only to come home and discover that the temp only fell 30-40 degrees. In my experience with a WSM the temps simply do not drop unless there is a major issue.
Has that happened to you often?
I agree and disagree on both points. The rain will minimally cool the cooker down for the simple reason, "the cooker is not hot enough @ 250* to maintain temps with a steady rain without opening the vents a bit to get the cooker hotter to compensate for the rain". Unless the rain is coming down in buckets it will not effect the fire other than adding moisture in the cooker, since there is room underneath the grate for the water to accumulate. You will have to adjust your vents thus burn more fuel if it gets too much water in it.
With your cooker only dropping 30-40* in 8+ hours with all the vents shut down you have a small leak somewhere in the cooker. Most likely the door or where the mid section meets the bottom. You can reform both areas easily by hand or bunch up foil in the leaking areas.