The parking lot at the Walmart in Saint Marys, Ga. is quiet hours after shoppers say they saw heavy rains, hail and strong winds Sunday.
First Coast News spoke with a customer who said more than 100 shoppers were told to stay inside for shelter against the storm.
"All of a sudden, the rain got super heavy and we remember hearing the roof kind of crack from the noise," shopper Lauren Hayes told First Coast News.
Hayes said she was shopping with her husband at Walmart when a manager came to her and told her they were under a Code Black for severe weather.
"He said, ‘You have two options. You could either go to the back of the store and hunker down, or leave the store and not reenter,’" Hayes recalled.
The couple decided they would try to leave, even though they had a cart full of merchandise.
"We walked to the front of the store, saw how bad the wind was, and decided against leaving and went back to the back of the store," said Hayes.
That’s where the rest of the shoppers stayed -- waiting.
"The longer we waited, the more the rain started to get heavier -- and then the hail started,” she said. “That's when I looked at my husband and went, ‘I think we should be scared at this point.’"
"Kids were crying. It was pretty bad. A lot of parents were trying to explain to their kids what was going on," Hayes said.
Hayes watched the clouds moving fast through the windows -- but she felt safe.
"I think we were probably at the best place we could be at the time," she said.
When she went outside, there was no damage to her car. First Coast News storm weather experts said the tornado touched down less than a 10-minute drive from the southeast corner of the Bings Bay base, where the tornado struck and injured four people.