Official: Tornado rolled through Cherokee County

"Most tornadoes are down and up," Rothfusz said. "This one was down, down and kept going and going."

Along with the tornado came heavy rains, which drenched the metro area and is believed to be responsible for at least one death. A flash flood watch for north Georgia was lifted Tuesday morning as Monday's heavy rainfall diminished to light drizzle.

The remnants of Tropical Storm Lee on Monday shook up metro Atlanta, sending afternoon tornadoes through Cherokee and Cobb counties while creating havoc throughout the region.

A 25-year-old man was swept away by a fast-moving creek near a dam in Norcross. His body was recovered late Tuesday morning. He was identified as Gerone Hunter, Gwinnett County Medical Examiner Ted Bailey told the AJC.

Hunter was one of two men who went into the water. His companion pulled himself to safety.

In Towne Lake in Cherokee County, apartment residents were evacuated to hotel rooms over fears their complex might collapse under the weight of heavy rain and falling trees.

In Woodstock’s Brookshire neighborhood, Chris Turner was playing a video game when his dogs let him know the storm approaching. Moments later, he heard a loud sound and both sides of the home had huge gaping holes. Siding glass and insulation debris were everywhere.

“It was unbelievable,” Turner said.

Sarah Leaf’s family lives near Turner, on hard-hit Santa Anita Avenue in Woodstock. Family members were on their way home from the beach in Alabama when “our neighbors called and said a tornado just went through,” she told the AJC on Tuesday.

“Then our next-door neighbor called and said, ‘you have a big hole in your house,’” Leaf said.

“We’ve got two dogs and four cats, and they were making sure all of those were accounted for,” she said.

Despite the heads-up from neighbors, Leaf said she “had no idea the extent of the damage until we got home and saw the hole in the house and all of the damage in the backyard.”

Leaf’s family, including her two young daughters, spent Monday night with neighbors.

“We have very sweet friends that took us in,” she said. “It could have been much worse. We could have been here, and the girls would have been very traumatized.”

Around 400 homes were damaged in Cherokee, county officials said Tuesday.

In Cobb County, Trey Marshall and his wife ran for cover after watching the storm approach on TV.

“We were watching the news and WSB showed it coming right at us,” Trey Marshall said. “So we grabbed our cat and our dog and got under the stairs.”

Marshall said he and his wife remained there for more than 15 minutes as they listened to the first salvo of the storm wash over their home.

“When we came out, trees were down on our neighbors’ house behind us,” Marshall said.

Robert Killian, who lives a mile from his boat and RV storage business, had no idea the storm had wrecked his Canton property until he drove up to police activity surrounding it.

“I didn’t hear a thing,” Killian said. “No wind. No nothing.”

When he made it around police roadblocks to Killian Park & Store, Killian was greeted by a destructive scene that left more than 80 boats and RVs damaged.

“It hit right dead center of the lot and wiped out everything in the center,” Killian said. “Some of them are just blown apart.”

While emergency officials were assessing the damage to metro Atlanta, this storm came in a distant second to the deadly one that socked the state last spring. Seven people died when a twister hit Ringgold in northwest Georgia that day.

“These tornadoes are nothing like the devastating twisters of April,” said Channel 2 meteorologist David Chandley.

Many Georgia residents affected by Monday's storms spent the night in the dark.

Georgia Power said that 2,475 customers were still without power as of 9:30 p.m., down from 11,000 at 6 a.m. Tuesday.

In the northwest corner of Georgia, Lafayette in Walker County picked up more than 10 inches of rain, and the Weather Service said that other parts of Dade, Catoosa, Chattooga and Walker counties reported 6 to 8 inches.

In Fort Oglethorpe, authorities evacuated 33 people from a flooded apartment complex.

Rainfall totals across metro Atlanta were generally just under an inch, including .88 inch at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and .89 inch in Marietta.

Spotty showers were predicted for Tuesday, with a daytime high in the 60s -- the coolest things have been since mid-May and unusual for early September, Chandley said.

-- Dispatch editor David Ibata and staff photographers John Spink and Curtis Compton contributed to this report.