"Unfortunately the rumor got around that everything was canceled," Snapp said. "But I told people, 'If we have a window of opportunity somewhere, we're going to shoot these fireworks."
The crowd dwindled to just a few carloads of people, he said. But as the rain let up, spectators returned in droves, numbering between 700 and 800 by the time the first fuse was lit at 10 p.m.
"Everyone was sitting there honking, waiting for them to shoot them off," said Kevin Wilson, supervisor of the Clark County Road Department. "It was fireworks in the downpouring rain."
The rain came back in what Snapp called a "torrential downpour," but the man in charge of lighting the fireworks continued. Snapp said fireworks companies don't set rain dates for shows when they are scheduled on the Fourth of July.
"Even though the music had to be canceled, we were still determined to do the fireworks," Snapp said. "The people wanted fireworks, or they wouldn't have been coming back in that weather."
That storm caused trees to crash down, a bit of flooding on Maple Street, a traffic light to go dead and power outages at about 100 homes.
A total of 3.2 inches of rain fell last night, according to Winchester Municipal Utilities.
"It was rough this morning," Wilson said at 9 a.m. after returning from the site of a downed tree on Wades Mill Road. Some "pretty good sized ones" fell on Van Meter Road, and a couple of small ones on Venable roads, he said.
Crews went out at about midnight to clean up the areas, and three were out this morning to locate and clean up obstacles in the road.
At 1 a.m., intense lightning and wind knocked out power to 52 homes on Schollsville Road near Miller Hunt Road, said Clark Energy CEO Paul Embs.
Power was restored within 35 minutes. Forty-six homes on Rockwell Road also lost power at 7:30 p.m. It was back on around 9 p.m.
At the intersection of Lexington Avenue and Maple Street, the Winchester Road Department reported that a traffic light went out at about 7 p.m., and that water pooled on the road at the same time, unable to go down a drain quickly enough.
A police officer directed traffic there for about 30 minutes until the light and water level were stabilized.
