As they looked up at the sky Friday morning, Jason and Tammy Knight say they saw a small twister bearing down on their Crystal Lakes subdivision.

They didn't wait around to see what would happen. They hopped in their truck and tried to get as far away as possible.

Felicia Joseph/The Daily Advance (ENLARGE)

Pasquotank County firefighters and other rescue personnel board up a mobile home at 3010 Crystal Lake Drive after it was struck by a tornado early Friday morning. None of the house's three occupants were injured when the twister hit, officials said.

"It was forming as I was looking at it," Jason Knight said. "I grabbed my wife and got in the truck and drove out of the neighborhood. We didn't make it to end of road before we turned around and came back. It had passed so fast."

As they drove back home, they stopped off to check on their neighbors.

"My wife went to knock on the front door and saw (a home) was off its foundation," Knight said. "I went around back, held the doors open, and went inside, and got the family together and brought them all out. Everybody was OK."

The occupants of the home at 3010 Crystal Lake Drive — a woman, her 12-year-old daughter and an infant child — had huddled in a bathtub with pillows to ride out the twister, Knight said.

No one was injured, but the manufactured home that the family moved into only a couple of months ago is probably beyond repair, officials said.

Officials declined to release the name of the woman or her children.

Red Cross officials were notified to provide them assistance.

The tornado, which hit between 9 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., twisted the doublewide mobile home off its foundation, blowing out windows and tearing off a part of its roof.

A mobile home across the street also lost some siding and an awning in the strong winds but other than downed tree limbs, no other damage was reported.

Laura Bortner, who lives in the mobile home, said she feels fortunate because the damage could have been much worse.

"Our whole backyard has got tree limbs down. Siding is down. Lawn furniture is somewhere in that field," she said.

Bortner said her family just moved to Crystal Lakes from Connecticut.

"We've never seen anything like it," she said.

Bortner said she feels for her neighbor whose home was severely damaged in the storm.

"They just moved in a couple of months ago. They just had a baby," she said.

The tornado may have touched down first in a field in the Pasquotank County Commerce Park off Main Street Extended, Pasquotank County Manager Randy Keaton said. No damage was reported because the storm apparently touched down in an open field, he said.

From there, the twister touched down again in Crystal Lakes, hitting the mobile home. It then skipped over to an area behind Memory Gardens, a privately owned cemetery. Some trees in the cemetery were uprooted.

There were also sightings of a funnel cloud near Katie's Trail, a subdivision of modular homes near three Pasquotank County schools off Northside Road, Keaton said. There were no reported touchdowns of the tornado in that area, however.

Keaton said all three schools were in session at the time, but students were in safe parts of the buildings because tornado warnings had previously been issued.

Crystal Lakes is a subdivision of about 20 mobile homes and modular homes, Keaton said. It is located off U.S. Highway 17 North, several miles south of the U.S. 17-U.S. Highway 158 intersection.

Several other tornadoes touched down in the Albemarle Friday.

Patty Madry, emergency management coordinator for Chowan County, said a tornado damages four roofs in that county.

"We had one irrigation system that was twisted. It pretty much has to be replaced, and some trees are down," she said. "But (the damage is) very minor. ... (There was) no (damage to) structures, no injuries."

She said residents reported seeing several funnel clouds.

She said a tornado touched down in neighboring Bertie County and damaged a home, but there were no reported injuries.

Currituck County had no tornado touchdowns.

Jarvis Winslow, emergency management director for Perquimans, said his county suffered no damage from tornadoes either.

"I got a report of one funnel cloud in the Belvedere area, but I didn't see any damage. We're blessed," he said.

News Editor Julian Eure contributed to this report.