Lightning also struck the Belmont apartments off Cowan Boulevard. Firefighters evacuated residents and doused several hot spots.

On a stifling evening with patches of blue sky and only a 20 to 30 percent chance of scattered storms, spectators gathered at the city's new Riverfront Park on Sophia Street for a festival of American music.

Among them were several-dozen visitors from Fredericksburg's sister city of Frejus, France--there to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Fredericksburg-Frejus relationship. They planned to picnic and listen to local acts from doo-wop to gospel to blues.

Fredericksburg Sister City Association President Cathy Herndon was sharing a picnic with Mayor Tom Tomzak when dark clouds gathered and thunder rumbled. She looked west across Sophia Street and up Charlotte Street.

"You could watch it come down the street," she said.

Within moments, rain and wind whooshed into the park and sent spectators scurrying for canopy tents set up for vendors and musicians.

But the tents were no match for the wind. Nine of them blew over.

People shielded sound equipment and musical instruments with their bodies, but some of the expensive gear was lost, said music festival coordinator Mandy Carr. The concert was called off.

Carr and Herndon said a woman was taken to the hospital with a gash on her head, and another person was hit by a tent and treated for cuts by EMTs at the scene.

But another musical event, a Charlie Daniels Band concert a couple of miles away at Celebrate Virginia Live, went on as planned. Breeze from the storm cooled off the crowd but brought little rain.

Elsewhere in the city, stately trees split their trunks and toppled onto power lines and streets.

About 4,000 Dominion power customers were still without electricity late last night.

At the National Weather Service in Sterling, meteorologist Andy Woodcock said the storm was small and isolated, hitting Fredericksburg but not surrounding counties. It started at 6:30 p.m., was fiercest between 6:40 and 6:45 and was over by 6:55 p.m.

Later, as the clouds gave way to blue skies, Carr, the festival coordinator, just shook her head.

She'd made arrangements to move the concert indoors, to James Monroe High School, if bad weather hit. But that call would've had to have been made by about 4 p.m., and the forecast at that time was for a hot but fair evening.

"I look at it this way," she said. "It was a year's worth of work [gone]. But fortunately no one was seriously hurt."

And, she added, "It gave the French something to remember."

Reporter Ben Sellers and photographer Mike Morones contributed to this story.

Laura Moyer: 540/374-5417
Email: lmoyer@freelancestar.com