Vancouver-area residents had no idea that a tornado was brewing overhead when, without warning, large hail started pounding onto them sideways, the sky went dark, and the winds began to swirl.

Jerome Nye said he suddenly found himself right in the center of the storm.

“There was no doubt in my mind that I was in a tornado,” he said. “It is one of the most remarkable experiences that I’ve ever had. I’ll never get over how perfectly it dropped over me. I was terrified for that second.”

"I saw it coming and thought, 'Whatever that is, it's scary,"' said Kym Calder, 47, who ran into a nearby church for shelter when she saw the funnel cloud ahead of her.

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Another witness told of high winds nearly lifting her car at a supermarket and blowing shopping carts into vehicles.

 Share/read comments: Describe what you saw

Connie Storey of Vancouver was walking her dog when the wind came up and blew her all the way across the street and into her neighbor's cyclone fence.

“I hung on for dear life," she recalled.

There was an "explosion of power lines," and branches, garbage cans and recycling bins were strewn about.

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“I was literally holding on to the fence for dear life and my dog… he leaned against the fence as well and put his head against my legs and we just held on. The amount of stuff that blew by me was pretty intense,” Story said.

The high winds lasted about 30 seconds before moving on.

Paul Robinson said he was terrified and excited at the same time.

"I heard the sound-wave first… I walked outside and noticed a really dark cloud. I had a camera phone but I was too nervous and freaked out so I ran inside the house,” he said. “It sounded like a jet aircraft right outside my house, the whole house was vibrating in and out.”

Comments poured into kgw.com from viewers eager to tell their own amazing stories.

“The clouds above my work building started forming a circle, and eventually all the branches from the surrounding trees started getting caught in the wind and circling above the building,” one viewer explained.

Another person described odd, loud rumbling and unusual hail surrounding before the tornado hit.

 Video: Teen explains how he caught tornado on tape

“It then turned into buckets of marble sized hail and I couldn't even see the hood of my car in front of me. The road was covered in hail so bad that my car started sliding when I tried to stop to pull over… I've never been in a tornado or seen one so I had no idea what was going on. I can't believe I was so close to it all and never knew!”

Another person who was in their car wrote, "...all of the sudden a huge amount of wind came through and my car started to shake and it felt like my car was lifting off the ground. So I ran out of the car and into the building. Things were flying everywhere, trees, papers, trashcans, etc. The wind broke out the glass of the door of the office. It was pretty amazing and scary! It lasted only about 1 minute, but that was long enough."

Dragged By the Power of the Wind

A Gresham high school student said her class noticed odd weather in the Gresham area, too.

"The classroom of seniors fell silent as we watched in awe of the extreme weather which none of us had ever experienced before. The sky grew dark as winds began to roar. It then rained and hailed sizes of up to the shape of cooked peas. But it wasn't like other storms, instead it was thicker, stronger, bigger, and almost as if it wasn't falling, but being dragged along by only the power of the wind."

Wrote another viewer: "...King's Way Christian School was right in the middle of the storm between the billboard that blew over and Joel Olson's trucking. KWCS is a large school...about 550 students. The school handled the event like pros. They kept all the kids calm and safe as they briefly lost power and huddled together while the tornado passed."

(The Associated Press also contributed to this article.)