A tornado was sighted near Towner Friday evening and storm damage was reported across the region late Friday afternoon.

“We had severe wind,” said Carol Kramer, who lives 4 1/2 miles east of Granville.

She heard that a tornado was spotted near Towner. On her property near Granville, the wind caused some damage, but she had heard of no injuries.

“It just lifted a bunch of stuff that was laying around … it took it up like a piece of paper and threw it into a tree,” she said.

Kramer said the lawn chairs and other items that were displaced by the wind can be picked up and put back in place.

The storm also knocked over trees.

People in the Granville area had stopped along the side of the road to watch the storm. Kramer said it was scary because there was more wind than she has seen in awhile and there was no place to go to escape the storm. There was a lot of wind, but not much rain, which Kramer said is a pity.

“We need rain,” she said.

Karla Thompson, who lives near Denbigh, said she and her husband were on their way home from New Rockford when the storm hit. They stopped four or five miles east of Towner on U.S. Highway 2 and she took live video for Facebook of the clouds.

“It was insane,” said Thompson. “”I’ve never been in anything like that in my life … when we were sitting in our pickup, we had a small trailer (attached) to the back that we could see listing. I was scared. The wind was so strong and the rain. It literally felt like we were going to be lifted up and carried off. Thankfully, nobody was hurt.”

Her 14-year-old son was home alone, so his parents told him to go to the basement. Her son claimed that a tornado went through their yard, but Thompson said it might have just been high winds.

“It almost looked like somebody took a machete and started whacking trees around our yard,” Thompson said.

Carla Hansen reported seeing quarter-sized hail when a storm hit in Deering at 5:17 p.m. She heard the hail dropping on her brand-new metal roof, which had been installed after the last major storm came through a year ago.

She said one place nearby has broken siding and a cracked window from the hail damage on Friday.

Other neighbors in Deering reported similar effects.

“There’s quite a bit of damage up here,” Hansen said.

The damage was sporadic, according to Hansen, who owns a bar in Deering. Damage was heavy in some places and in others nothing at all was seen.

“There’s places it didn’t even rain,” she said Saturday.