Sean Borek

A News 8 viewer sent a picture of a funnel cloud forming that he took from his Granbury home around 8 p.m.

DALWORTHINGTON GARDENS — The National Weather Service confirmed Wednesday that a small tornado with a very small footprint touched down in Dalworthington Gardens Tuesday night.

The twister, classified as an F1 tornado, was estimated to have packed winds in the 85 to 90 mph range.

Veteran weather service meteorologist Bill Bunting was at the scene Wednesday morning to examine the damage.

"The fact that there's a very short path that's north-south and it's very narrow; and the fact that we had reports of funnel clouds in the general area with the storms last evening; it's certainly possible that what we're seeing here is a localized spin-up, a brief tornado," Bunting said.

Vehicles were damaged by hail as large as baseballs and roofs were torn apart by high winds but no injuries were reported in the storm system that generated specacular lightning and heavy rain.

Radar and storm spotters detected cloud rotation that might have signaled a tornado, and early eyewitness reports indicated that a funnel cloud touched down in northern Arlington.

Irish Hancock, Arlington's emergency management coordinator, said a wall cloud also had formed near Lake Arlington but quickly collapsed.

WFAA-TV

Dalworthington Heights residents began cleaning up Wednesday morning.

A tornado warning was issued for Tarrant County at 8:30 p.m. and canceled about 30 minutes later.

In Dalworthington Gardens, at least four homes damaged by tornadic winds were deemed uninhabitable by officials. The F1 twister is at the lower limit of the standard Fujita scale that meteorologists use to measure the fury of tornadoes.

About 2 inches of rain was reported in parts of Arlington, and similar rainfall was reported in other parts of southern Tarrant County and across northern Johnson County.

There were isolated pockets of severe weather, including hail and hard rain, in Collin and Dallas counties. Intense lightning was reported across the metropolitan area.

Before the tornado warnings sent people scurrying for shelter, weather watchers were focused on an intense thunderstorm that threatened to flood already-saturated ground. Despite the torrential rain that fell in less than an hour, no significant flooding was reported.

WFAA-TV

Hail the size of pingpong balls fell across Arlington.

Although the storm did not inflict widespread damage, high winds downed trees and caused electrical disruptions.

Northwest Arlington resident Stephen Morgan knew there was a chance the storm could bring damage when he heard the hail. Putting a bucket on his head for protection, he ventured from his home in the 2000 block of Wesley Drive to assess the situation.

"I could see the black funnel cloud and blue all around it," Morgan said. "Lightning lit up the sky. Trees started going crazy. There were baseballs falling out of the sky."

He marveled as the sky suddenly turned from green to dark.

A funnel cloud 300 to 400 yards from his house was moving toward him.

"It looked like the funnel cloud touched the ground," he said. "It kept getting bigger and bigger – you could see the debris."

Morgan ran inside and told his wife to gather their four children, ages 1 to 7, and go into the bathroom. The family stayed in the bathroom for about 10 minutes until the tornado sirens stopped.

Afterward, Morgan went outside and discovered his vehicle had been badly damaged by hail. Tree branches littered the area.

"My biggest fear was that it was going to land right here because everything was shaking," he said. "I feel pretty lucky because there's no telling with tornadoes."

Calmer weather was expected today and Thursday, with partly sunny skies and high temperatures in the mid-60s. But showers and thunderstorms were expected to return Friday and Saturday.

WFAA-TV reporter Jim Douglas in Dalworthington Gardens, WFAA.com and DallasNews.com contributed to this story.