In the kitchen of her ruined home, Pat McLendon picked up a shard of broken china Wednesday and considered herself among the lucky ones in Cherokee and north Fulton counties.

If not for a wedding shower that kept her out of the house most of Tuesday, she would have been napping in the front bedroom, when high winds swept in from a tornado in east Cherokee.

Chris Quinn/AJC (ENLARGE)

This hail fell at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Bridgemill subdivision off Sixes Road in Cherokee County.

Photos: Reader photos 1 | 2 | 3 | Tornado damage Video Send your storm photos! Weather updates Weather radar Recent headlines: 61-year-old man arrested in meth bust  Lenox Square adds 6 new stores, Italian restaurant  DeKalb hires ex-Atlanta mayoral spokesman for high-ranking job     • Atlanta and Fulton County news

The storm toppled an 85-foot pine, impaling the front half of her house in Mountain Park.

McLendon, a retiree, rode out the windstorm in an old cast-iron bathtub, along with Duncan, her yellow lab, and Grits, a Norwich terrier.

"I threw the dogs in the bathtub and jumped on top of them," McLendon said.

By Wednesday afternoon, the scent of fresh cut pine wafted through the house, as workmen on the roof above labored to remove the hefty trunk. Her house is uninhabitable, one of 18 in the tiny city of Mountain Park that authorities say sustained structural damages.

Adjacent Cherokee County took the brunt of the tornado. Officials estimate about 1,000 homes were damaged, 250 heavily, as storms and hail raked the north metro area Tuesday evening.

Residents in the most heavily damaged neighborhoods spent Wednesday cleaning up and consoling each other. Forecasters said it was at least the 32nd tornado to hit Georgia this year.

The National Weather Service said winds reached 95 mph in southern Cherokee.

Most of the structural damage was caused by falling trees, officials said.

"Homes aren't blown away, but the damage is widespread," Cherokee Sheriff Roger Garrison said.

Garrison said he saw about a dozen mobile homes that were "literally split in half" by trees. The Weather Service said the damage covered a swath about 5 miles long and a mile wide, running east from the intersection of Old Ga. Highway 5 and East Cherokee Drive.

No injuries were reported, which Garrison termed "a miracle."

State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine said insured damages will be "well north" of $5 million.

Tuesday's storms came little more than a week after Mother's Day tornadoes damaged 9,000 homes statewide and several hundred in Clayton and Douglas counties. In April, tornadoes hit downtown Atlanta.

As assessment and clean-up got underway, numerous roads were closed and traffic signals were out in both Cherokee and neighboring Cobb County.

Cherokee authorities set up a command post at Johnston Elementary School. The school was closed Wednesday, but was expected to reopen today.

Several homes in the Southern Oaks subdivision off Arnold Mill Road east of Woodstock sustained significant damage. Steve Barton said he and his wife and two dogs rode out the storm in the garage of the home where he has lived for 21 years.

One tree crashed through the dining room of his two-story home, while several huge limbs blown from the top of another tree balanced on the roof. Next door neighbor Scott Strotman said the hail that accompanied the high winds, "sounded like a hundred monkeys with hammers in each hand banging all over the house, just beating on it."

At the Fountain Lake Mobile Home Park, trailers were damaged by falling trees.

Donna Hamilton, a former teacher, ducked into a walk-in closet with her 84-year-old father and 14-year-old son when the storm hit. Immediately after, she said, people in the neighborhood ran door-to-door, checking on each other. "I've seen more people pull together and band together in the last 15 to 20 hours."

John L. Sell, spokesman for Georgia Power, said all 19,000 homes that lost power in metro Atlanta from Tuesday night's storms had the lights back on by 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Staff writers Marcus Garner, David Pendered, Yolanda Rodriguez, Christian Boone and Christopher Quinn contributed to this article.