BELTON — Within minutes, Belton residents saw their July 4th celebrations turned upside down during a thunderstorm Friday afternoon.

On Country Road near Welfare Baptist Church, residents believe a tornado may have touched down. One man found a tree laid across his truck. Two houses down, a neighbor’s utility building had caved in and further up the street Lisa Lee had a hole in her kitchen ceiling where a tree limb fell through the roof.

“It was more action than I thought,” said Kathy Yeargin, who lives at 212 Country Road. “I thank God everyone was OK.”

Her family, like most others on the block, were having a cookout when the storm hit. Out of nowhere, her son yelled, “Mom, it’s a tornado!”

“It lasted maybe 10 or 15 seconds or something,” Yeargin said.

Lee and her family were sitting in the sunroom of their mobile home when they noticed the sky growing dark. Her son was outside cooking steaks on the grill. Her grandson was napping in a swing nearby.

A hard rain followed the clouds, and faster than the family could piece together a tree beside her home snapped and fell. Lee said the air was so thick it looked like a fog had set in, and her son, Justin Copeland, struggled to get inside. The family grabbed hold of each other, ran to the hallway and got down on the floor.

“The good Lord was with us,” she said. “Had it stayed on the ground, we wouldn’t be here.”

The storm brought intense lightning, high winds, and a lot of rain. Andrew Kimball, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Greer said based on the weather conditions, residents most likely experienced a downburst not a tornado.

In an downburst, significantly rain-cooled air hits ground level and spreads out in all directions producing strong winds. Unlike a tornado, winds in a downburst are directed outward from the point where it hits land.

Several large tree limbs blocked Belton’s streets along with fallen power lines. A vacant house at 206 Brown Ave. had a tree on it, and on Brown Street one tree was split form a lightning strike.

Belton Fire Chief Alan Sims said firefighters responded to more then a half dozen calls as the storm ended around 4:45 p.m. Most of the calls were for fallen power lines and other electrical problems.

According to Duke Energy’s Web site, 41 people in Anderson County were without power just after 5 p.m. As of 7:38 p.m., 106 households were without electricity. Duke Energy crews were working to restore power as quickly as possible, and by 10 p.m. the number of customers without power was down to 97.

David Rogers contributed to this story.