Monday, June 23, 2008

Taste of Tippecanoe & Hailers Too Usher in Summer

The Shephard Family soaking up the sun, finishing up the pork loins, and ready to play some frisbee before some dessert!

It was a weekend to remember. You know its summer in Lafayette when the Taste of Tippecanoe hits town. It is our annual rite of passage as we go from Spring into Summer. The Taste of Tippecanoe was bigger and better than ever before according to most of the folks I talked to. There were up to 40 different food vendors which set a new record and it took about 400 volunteers to make this event so special. Thank you volunteers.



Your Hoosier hospitality made a difference. This party spanned from Lafayette into West Lafayette. Yes, two great cities and one great time! The John T. Meyers Pedestrian Bridge filled up in a hurry.

Things turned "gooey good" at the kids cookie-making contest!

WLFI TV-18 was out in full force with a special one hour show. Our staff wanted to get out in the community and meet as many of our great viewers as possible so we could show our appreciation of how much you mean to us. Yes, it should have been a day off for most of us, but for us this was our Indianapolis 500 only bigger!

Sue Scott, Renetta, and I enjoying our time together between live-shots.

None of this would have been possible without the big three! Way to make us look good Scott, Adam, and Phil!

It was a great opportunity to be able to not only be a part of a huge event, but just enjoy it with you with great food, music, and your wonderful company. So in essence, it was better than a day off because of all the great folks I got to meet face to face. We have the most loyal viewers you will find anywhere else. Even Smoothie King watches us! We were dancing in the streets and slapping some high-fives! I am ready for another Angel Food Cake smoothie.

We may not be the biggest station around but we are a station that can compete with anybody. We have so many talented and hard-working people and it is no coincidence that many people that move on from WLFI land in top 50 markets and in some cases top 25 markets without any problem. Yes, I may sound a bit like Matt Painter at this point but I really do believe in WLFI and our community. Lafayette is a special place that you cannot find much of anymore across our country. We take pride in being your only local station and bringing you the best local news. By meeting so many nice folks it will just make me work harder to be the best because you deserve it! Our entire staff sends a big thank you for all your support.


This weekend would not have been complete without nature trying to make things interesting. The forecast called for pop up thunderstorms that would be hit and miss and luckily for us the storms on Saturday did miss the Taste of Tippecanoe. The weather was a big reason why some event organizers called it the quickest start out of the gates ever. Some volunteers were going through 1,000 tickets per hour. The big ticket when it came to our weather this weekend was certainly the west-northwest flow bringing unusually cool air aloft over Lafayette. You combine that with a strong sun angle and we had a few places that had some hail or what I like to call "hailers" that dropped golf-ball size hail in De Motte and Grissom Air Force Base.


But in the end it was the man-made fireworks that prevailed. I have to say that it was one of the best fireworks shows I have ever seen and this includes the Fourth of July. There seemed to be at least 3 grand finales and there were even smiley face fireworks at the start. I had a great time just taking it all in with my family. Lauren was a little frightened at first but then was just fine and she really liked the pink fireworks. Abbey started worrying about some of the pyro clouds that were made from the fireworks, but I told her that she would be fine and that they would not form thunderstorms. Imagine that. Megan was amazed at how long they lasted. Now today we will get a needed break from nature's fireworks as high pressure moves in. Tune in to find out how long it will last and we will also take a look at when some real summertime heat and humidity will arrive. Have a great day.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

While I did not come to Lafayette to enjoy the "Taste" I was thankful for great wx for the event. I so identify with your little one and thinking "STORM" in any cloud she sees. I was like that at her age and older. My mom told me she had to take me from a movie if there was a thunderstorm in it! Now every storm that comes up just might be that tornado I so dread.

Well, the next few days look perfect again, so let's all enjoy!

Mary Anne in Remington

Anonymous said...

I did not make it out as well stayed here to watch the storms but just looking at your pictures makes me feel like I was there.

We could here the fireworks from are home loud!!! sounded like a great show wish I had seen it.

Hope all who did go had a lot of fun. However we did watch the wlfi news and we seen you mike hangeing out with smoothie king.

The air did get a little cool yesterday as well as the past week so the pool temp did cool as well now looking for some more hot weather to go swimming looks like tomorrow will be near 82*.
Again hope all had fun and have a great day!!!

Justin in Lafayette.

Anonymous said...

To all the bloggers, here is what was going on in Jasper County Saturday while you all were having fun, LOL! This was sent to my by a friend who works in Rensselaer.
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"You might report to your weather friends that it was almost the same strip of land just north of Hwy 16 that got hit with the repeated hail up here on Saturday...none on the west side of town by Browns tho(thank goodness). One guy that I work with said by the time it was all over in one corner of his yard he had a pile of hail about 4 inches high and he's got broken windows at his house. He lives just off 16 and he said it got bad enough that he took his son with him and headed for the basement when the windows started breaking(mind you...on a new house he just finished building last summer!) That same strip of land had destroyed corn crops."

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There was constant thunder with this storm from my vantage point which would be 7 miles south of this location. I saw storm reports of large hail. She said there was wind with it,too. There was also hail there north to Rens.

Mary Anne in Remington

Anonymous said...

How awful for those folks! I have been bad hail storm before,damage to our home and cars!!!

Anonymous said...

we were able to make it to the taste this weekend. the weather was perfect!!

we took video of the fireworks,but i was smart enough to delete it before ever being able to load it on to the computer!!

i hope these cooler nights keep comming our way...they are perfect for sitting in a HOT TUB or even possibly driving home with the top down!! haha

today (tuesday) looks to be a nice day, just keeping an eye on wednesday...