The Weather Service said it received numerous reports of funnel clouds over Snohomish County. A meteorologist at the Seattle office, Brad Colman, said there are no confirmed tornadoes on the ground.

He says the funnel clouds are formed by swirling cold air. If the funnels touch down, he says they are very brief, with winds of up to 50 miles an hour.

The funnel clouds come a day after two small tornados touched down in southwest Washington, damaging barns near Tenino and Thurston County and La Center in Clark County but causing no injuries.

Video: Ferocious Storm Hits Hard And Fast

The twisters Thursday afternoon apparently were spawned by a 10-square-mile storm cell embedded in an intense cold front that brought heavy rain to much of the western part of the state, the National Weather Service said.

"It was very common across the area today to see extremely heavy rainfall with localized low visibility and ponding of water on roadways," said Mark O'Malley, a weather service meteorologist in Portland, Ore.

At one point visibility on Interstate 5 was cut to 50 feet, State Patrol troopers said.

Jeff Rood, a meteorologist with the weather service in Seattle, said the tornado near Tenino struck around 3 p.m., covering about a quarter-mile along the ground in a minute or two.

"My wife comes over, hollering, 'The barn's gone!"' Marv Dupper told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.

Crumpled strips of metal roofing were hurled about, one high into a tree, and Dupper said a piece of lumber punctured the roof of a building on his property.

Louise Richardson of Tenino told The Olympian of Olympia she was driving a school bus with three students at the time.

"We saw a funnel cloud and a lot of debris flying around," Richardson said. "They asked me if it was a tornado and I said it sure looked like one to me.

The twister outside La Center hit about 4:30 p.m. and tore part of the roof off a barn, said Wanda Likens, a weather service meteorologist in Portland, Ore. No one was injured, but the woman who reported the damage said her horses were spooked and didn't want to go back to the barn, Likens said.

According to weather service statistics, Washington averages 1.8 tornadoes a year, but Thursday's were the fourth and fifth to touch down in the state in the past four weeks.

A tornado was reported also brought lightning, hail and heavy rain, another was reported April 27 near Sumas and one was reported in East Wenatchee on May 19.