Correct... From the ground station there is a signal going to the birds. That signal is lets say 1 watt. The bird (satellite) receives that signal and amplifies it and sends it back to you at 100 watts. (example) What normally happens is ground station 1 is always transmitting a signal and when weather occurs to the point where fade happens, the ground station increases power to burn through the rain, but that always doesn't work. If the storms are heavy enough to the point where they cant burn through the rain, then the ground station will switch to a secondary ground station (ie ground station 2) That is usually located 60 miles or more away and 99 percent of the time has clear los or the fade is much less than what's at ground station 1. So traffic is shoved on to the other station until the rain fade goes away at the primary site.
What happened last night was, there happened to be two separate weather systems occurring at the same time over both sites causing fade on both antennas. When the signal cant make it due to weather, this condition happens. Its not often but it does occur occasionally. Its called dual fade. Because the signal cant get to the bird as you have weather blocking the signal from both sites, the satellite has nothing to mirror back to you. Because there is no signal reaching the satellite it's like turning off a lightbulb and nothing gets bounced back and the power is off and you at your house get a 0 on the signal indicator. Once the fade on the dish went away, to the point where the satellite can now bounce a signal back to you, you get a good level on the transponders you were getting a 0 during the fade event.
The ground stations will usually pick between one of the two sites and the first to go under the threshold is swapped to, but one is always transmitting. You dont want both transmitting at the same time. Thats very very very bad and called dual illumination. That can destroy a bird as you are now overloading the bird. The satellite is like one giant trampoline. If nothing is bouncing on it, your going to get nothing back. But if your doing big ole belly flops on to the trampoline, your going to belly flop back up to the air. In this case to your home via a satellite signal.
