I live in a windy area (near a wind farm). Winds up to about 40mph are pretty common. Much of my imaging is in winds up to 25 or 30mph. If I couldn't do this, I would lose lots of imaging time.
The main point of my response is that the problem involves more than just the mount. You need to think about everything, starting from the ground underneath, all the way to the tallest part.
I typically run 5 minute, unguided exposures at 0.9 arc seconds per pixel, and my stars look great. I almost never throw out subs due to mount issues, including wind. But things started out a bit rough.
My mount is in a different class than yours. I have an AP1600-AE. This is a 220lb capacity mount with absolute encoders that can actively resist motion from the wind. Despite all that, my initial results were terrible whenever the wind picked up more than about 10mph or so. I think that my experience is relevant, because the principles are not specific to my mount.
Anyway, I'd been using my mount for almost 8 years before moving to where I live now. In all that time, the mount had been exemplary in its performance. So much so, that I was quite surprised when I was getting poor results at my new property. My system should never have been bothered by light wind, so I didn't start my investigation there.
I checked everything I could think of in the mount's hardware and software systems, but couldn't find any problems. I eventually went out and did what I probably should have done on day 1: I went to the mount in the daytime, bumped it, and checked to see how much it moved and how long it took to settle.
I was a bit surprised at how much the mount moved when I bumped it. The thing is, that mount was absolutely solid. It was the whole structure that moved. I use a portable pier with turnbuckles, and when I checked it, the turnbuckles were a bit loose. That was problem 1.
When I tightened the turnbuckles, there was immediate improvement. My percentage of "keepers" went way up (still frustrating when you are expecting 100%). But I was still seeing some issues on windier nights. As a test, I drove my motorhome out into the field and parked it just upwind of the scope. A few nights of imaging like were great, no matter the wind. So at least that confirmed my diagnosis of wind as the trigger.
At that point, I just accepted the performance of the system. Instead of pursuing the mount further, I just build a wind break around my imaging site. I bought a 10'x10'x6' high dog kennel. It was made of chain link fencing. When I set it up, I used tarps instead of chain link and anchored it to the ground. This worked great, and I thought that I was done.
The problem with my wind block is that we get lots of wind, and the tarps needed to be replaced more often than I liked. Still, I kept using it until one day we got some wind that was unusually strong, even for here. It was enough that my whole house shook, the windows rattled, and the plumbing vents made a sound like blowing over a giant pop bottle. We had two separate incidents where semis were blown over on a nearby interstate, and I know of two local observatories whose roofs were blown off. Did I mention that it's windy where I live?
On that day, the biggest gust hit when I was in my home office, with a view of my imaging site. I watched out the window as the wind block tore out of the ground and slid to the mount. The wind picked it up and over the mount, which it toppled on the way past. Fortunately, I did not have a scope mounted on it at the time. The wind block tumbled across the field for about 100 yards, shedding parts the whole way. The good news is that the mount was unharmed and just needed to be set back up again.
So after that experience, I realized that a temporary wind block really wasn't going to be a reasonable solution. I contacted the manufacturer of the mount, and they confirmed that it should be fine in my conditions. They've used the same mount in the same conditions and not had problems. Given that news, I started rethinking the mount.
Actually, I started thinking about the pier and the ground that it sits on. I considered ways to strengthen the turn buckles, but according to the manufacturer, that shouldn't be necessary. So I looked further down.
I've been doing astronomy fairly seriously for over 25 years, with most of my observing done out at dark sky sites. When I retired, I moved from the city (the Seattle area), to the east side of the mountains. We get far more clear nights here, and light pollution is not too bad (my home is under Bortle 3 skies when it's dark and transparent). When I set up in the field, I was in the habit of putting plywood squares under the pier or tripod feet to keep them from slowly sinking. Since I set up on bare ground here, I just did the same thing.
It turns out, that was a big mistake. The plywood squares work great at the (not windy) remote sites that I use. But in the wind, they seem to be pretty springy. To eliminate them as the source of the problem, I dug a hole under the position of each pier foot. I poured sand into the holes and packed them as best I could. I then sunk 12" round paving stones into the sand. I now set the pier up on those paving stones.
The result: Success! I pretty much don't think about wind anymore when I image, and I'm back to tossing zero subs due to the mount.
tl;dr
Think about the entire system. The stuff under your mount is every bit as important as the mount itself.
Depending on your budget, there are mounts available that can work just fine in any sane amount of wind (assuming that they, themselves are mounted solidly).
If you don't have a big budget, there are two things that I would look at in a mount.
First, you want minimal backlash. If there is backlash in the mount, gusty wind can cause thin, faint trails in the direction of the affected axis. In some situations, I have seen "barbell" shaped stars when the mount has shifted to each side of the gear mesh in the wind.
And second, size matters. I'm not generally a believer in the "use 50% capacity for imaging" thing. But in the wind, a mount with twice the capacity needed will be more stable than a smaller mount that is at its limit. This, of course, assumes that backlash is controlled.
I hope that this helps,
-Wade
