She was 6, attending a wedding reception at what is now the Radisson Hotel in Shenango Township. She remembers the hail, the wind, the flying debris and the black cloud.

She saw all those signs again Thursday as she sat outside her new apartment in South Pymatuning Township.

"It was a tornado," she said. "I saw it start to come toward me. I thought it was a tree. It shook my car back and forth six to eight times."

"I saw the tornado back in '85, so I know what one looks like."

South Pymatuning Township Police Chief John Kelly said he heard other reports of people seeing a funnel cloud.

Kelly said he could see a straight-line swath of devastation, about a half-mile wide, near Sump Lane, which is off Tamarack Drive and near Saranac Drive.

The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh said someone would survey the damage today to determine if a tornado touched down.

Ms. Palko had gone to the Bortner Apartments on Saranac Drive to drop off some items. She and her husband, Ed, were married two weeks ago and are moving in.

She was sitting in her car outside the building and decided to stay in her car because of the rain, wind and lightning, which she described as "so wicked."

"I thought I'd be safe in there," she said. "It came up all of a sudden."

When the car started shaking and she saw the funnel, she started to panic.

"All I could think of was my car getting lifted up, like that movie, 'Twister,'" she said.

She called her husband on her cellular telephone and screamed that a tornado was coming at her.

"They say you can hear things (when a tornado approaches), but I was too worked up," she said.

Once the storm abated, she got out of the car and realized the roof of the building behind her had been ripped off.

"I got out of my car and it was so calm," she said.

After the storm, she drove down Saranac and was saddened at what she saw: trees and lines down, trees on houses, debris everywhere.

"It was awful," she said. "It wiped everything out."