The rough weather hit northwestern Indiana the hardest, leaving Porter County residents with a lot of clean-up.

When the wind, rain, thunder and lightning hit around 8:00 p.m. central time Wednesday, residents knew this was no ordinary storm.

Chesterton Police say it was a tornado that ripped through their town.

“It got pretty much pitch black and when the rain started it started getting really, really freaking windy and it was shortly after that I heard the sirens go off,” said Mike Rogers, who witnessed the storm.

The fierce winds left their mark in Chesterton and it only took a matter of minutes.

Town officials did their best to prepare, “we pretty much knew it was coming, you could see it on the radar and a lot of us were watching it and as always it hit pretty fast,” said Town Manager Bernard Doyle.

Many trees throughout the town were uprooted, power lines torn down and among the damage, the middle school, where the roof is gone.

“There was even debris that drove right into the ground and then flew off so it just happened very quickly, I think no one saw it coming this fast,” said Lela Schmidt, who had just gotten home when it hit. “It came out of no where, but I knew something wrong when I felt that force of the kitchen window going in and I knew that definitely something was going on.”

Schmidt said the storm may have caused a lot of damage, but she’s thankful to have her life, “what can I say, at least we're not hurt, they're material things and can be replaced.”

The town manager says there were no injuries from the storm.

The electricity is out in most of the town and several streets are blocked off because of downed lines.

Meanwhile, the rest of Michiana felt the storms, while other funnel clouds produced.

St. Joseph County sounded the severe weather sirens around 8:15 p.m. and Kosciusko County was placed under a tornado warning about an hour later.