Atlanta weather | Tornado watch extended until Saturday morning

The toado watch that was to expire at midnight Friday for metro Atlanta and surrounding counties has been extended until 6 a.m. Saturday.

The latest National Weather Service alert follows a series of changing watches and waings that tried to keep pace with the fast-moving weather system blowing east from Alabama.

The storms dropped golf ball sized hail and blew down trees, taking out power to thousands.

Georgia Power had nearly 20,000 outages as of 9 p.m. Nearly half were concentrated in Gwinnett County in northeast metro Atlanta and Douglas County to the west. Most of the rest were to the north with another thousand scattered around the state.

"The main concentration is up in the Rome-Cartersville area," said Konswello Monroe, a Georgia Power spokeswoman. "They were hit hard."

Julie Brock of John's Creek was stranded in a restaurant with her family during a first of two waves of "big, fat marble" sized hail.

She was whacked on the knee as she sprinted to her SUV between the waves. She was inside and driving when the second hailstorm hit, pinging and cracking against the window and the metal roof. Brock said it was like being "in the middle of a rock storm."

In Gwinnett County, firefighters doused a fire that bued a two-story house in Norcross. The person who called to report the fire around 8:30 p.m. told dispatchers that flames were coming from the roof after a lighting strike, said a spokesman for the Gwinnett County Fire Department. One woman was displaced but no one was injured.

The storm alerts began early Friday with a toado watch that was to be in effect until midnight. On Friday night, the National Weather Service extended that watch until 6 a.m.

Earlier in the evening, the service had issued a toado waing for parts of Cobb, Fulton and DeKalb counties.

A toado watch means conditions are favorable for a toado. A toado waing means Doppler radar has detected rotational winds.

Glenn Bus, the chief meteorologist for GA Daily News, said in the aftermath of the storm that there was evidence of rotational winds in Bartow and Cobb counties, but he said it was too soon to say whether they were toadoes.

Trees were felled in several metro counties. One fell on a house in Sandy Springs. It happened in the 5200 blog of Riverview Drive just after 9 p.m., said Lt. Steve Rose of the Sandy Springs Police Department. The occupants escaped uninjured, he said.

In Douglas County, the roof of a business collapsed, according to GA Daily News.

The weather system is blamed for six deaths in Oklahoma and Arkansas.

Its approach interrupted outdoor events.

The Atlanta Dogwood Festival postponed its Comedy Sumit show that was scheduled for 8 p.m. Friday. Brian Hill, the festival's executive director, said the show would go on at 8 p.m. Saturday.

And the Atlanta Braves cancelled their Friday night game against the New York Mets after a 55-minute rain delay at Tuer Field, according to the AJC's David O'Brien. They'll play a traditional, one-ticket, doubleheader Saturday beginning at 4:10 p.m.

Forecasters say the skies should clear Saturday moing, with the temperature rising into the low 70s.

Sunday should be sunny, with highs in the mid-70s and lows in the 40s.

Staff Writers Kristi E. Swartz and Mike Morris contributed to this article.