Wise - A broad line of severe thunderstorms rich with heavy rains, hail, lightning and official tornado warnings thrashed the region from Northeast Tennessee through Southwest Virginia, Eastern Kentucky deep into West Virginia on Saturday, leaving fallen trees and damaged buildings in their wake.

Sweeping southeast out of the Ohio Valley through Kentucky, the line of strong storm cells fed by warm, humid air rocked across Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee from around 3 p.m. on, with tornado watches and severe thunderstorm warnings in effect through 9 p.m.

The town of Wise got belted by zero visibility rains along with an awesome display of thunder and lightning shortly before 4 p.m., but it was the city of Norton just to the southwest of Wise that bore the brunt of the storm's wrath.

Assistant City Manager Fred Ramey Jr. said at least four buildings in the 700 block area of Park Avenue, Norton's main thoroughfare, were damaged when the storm went through shortly before 4 p.m.

"It appears a parapet wall has fallen from the WAXM (radio) building over onto a portion of Friendly Floral. There also appears to be a chimney from another building in that block that's fallen over onto the roof of one or maybe two other buildings," Ramey said.

"The reports we have at this time is that there are no injuries, but we have people going through the buildings doing an initial structural review before taking any other action."

Ramey said two blocks of Park Avenue were closed to accommodate emergency response crews and their vehicles.

"We are using the main street for an aerial truck to look at the roofs of those buildings. I don't know how much longer (Park Avenue) will be blocked off, but I do know that some areas - especially the sidewalks around Friendly Floral and that general area - will be blocked off until some efforts will be done there," Ramey said.

The collapsing WAXM parapet "kicked that wall out a little bit" so that it was leaning out toward the parking lot of the Bank of America, Ramey said. As far as anyone knows, a tornado wasn't to blame, he said, just one gollywhacker of a storm.

"We had a little bit of high wind. And a tornado warning was issued, but just like for practically everywhere else around here," he said. "It got dark and windy and rained, probably like ... (in Wise), but we've had no report of a tornado. As of now we've had no reports of anything like that or any other serious damage."

A Lee County dispatcher said there were "about 50 trees down countywide" and one tree toppled onto a house on Cedar Hill Road, located west of Jonesville. The homeowner reported the situation and that nobody in the home was hurt, she said.

A couple of roads in Lee County were blocked by fallen trees but the Virginia Department of Transportation was already clearing those and they weren't expected to be a major problem, she said.

A Scott County E-911 dispatcher said the storms left "just trees in the road" but none were closed by the debris.

In Tennessee, Kingsport and Sullivan County authorities had received no reports of damage from the ominous storm cell that moved through the area, and no power outages had been reported.