What a crazy storm!

After another unexpected return to Hunter Mountain, for the 3rd time in 3 days, I had to race back to Stephentown before the impending doom working its way across the entire state of New York, reached us first! That made for the most nerve racking hour and a half drive in as long as I can remember. As I’m racing back to Disc Jam, I’m watching cloud to cloud and cloud to ground lighting bolts, strike multiple times per second, and seeing all kinds of intense weather heading towards to festival site on the Doppler radar. Almost poetically, as soon as I arrived back on site at Disc Jam, the skies held out for about 5 minutes to allow me to prep the booth for wet weather, then like clock work,  just as Lettuce hit the stage, the skies opened up and the thunder & lightning took over the sounds of the funk. A mass of people was rushed away from the stage and instructed to seek shelter. Meanwhile, Lettuce reluctantly ended their set after only playing for a few minutes…in hopes the rain would let up in enough time to allow for some more music!

Unfortunately, it didn’t let up till close to midnight which was well beyond what allowed in the noise permit. But the music continued in the Late Night tent, and promises to keep rocking it out all night!

Meanwhile at Taste of Country:

So as you can probably guess, since the two festivals are only an hour and half apart, the same storms that hit Disc Jam also hit Hunter Mountain as well. After getting the scoop from Tim, it sounds like just as Keith Urban hit the Main Stage, the storm hit the mountain with just as much force! All 30,000+ attendees were all evacuated from the mountain and all rushed into the ski lodge for safety. After the storms subsided, the music went back on and Keith Urban played until 1am before all the campers rushed back to their sites for the night.

Luckily, despite the very heavy rains, both booths were able to survive with very little rain damage, and neither of them require any kind of TLHC (Tools, Labor, Hay & Cash) so that’s a big win in my book! Doppler/Forecast look pretty clear for the next couple of days, so hopefully we’ll be able to dry out a bit, and morale will stay high at both events!

For now it’s bed time for B!