A trip to Baileyton on Friday to fill their car's gas tank treated a Greeneville couple to a view of a freakishly beautiful thunderstorm that had spawned tornadoes across several East Tennessee counties.

Wade and Barbie Bradford of Greeneville said they used the camera of Wade's cell phone to photograph the lightning-illuminated thunderstorm cloud as it rotated above the mountains east of Baileyton about 8:20 p.m. Friday.

Wade Bradford said he and his wife observed the thunderstorm as they drove toward Baileyton on Baileyton Road and pulled their car to a stop just after they crossed the bridge that spans Interstate 81 in Baileyton.

"We had never seen anything like it before," Wade Bradford said of the rotating storm cloud. He said its interior was illuminated by lightning bolts as it moved over Stone Mountain and Fodderstack Mountain.

"I couldn't get Wade's camera phone to work and I missed a photo of a lightning bolt hitting the mountain," Barbie Bradford said.

People were standing in the parking lot of the nearby Davy Crockett Travel Center watching the storm and other motorists were pulling their cars off the road to take in the view as well, Barbie Bradford said.

Wade Bradford said the huge thunderstorm cloud slowly rotated as it moved along the mountain range and seemed to break up somewhat after striking the tallest peak northeast of Baileyton.

Although the same storm spawned tornadoes north and west of Knoxville, it apparently caused no damage as it moved across northeastern Greene County on Friday evening.

Bill Brown, director of the Greeneville-Greene County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security said on Friday night that he followed the storm north on Interstate 81 until it left Greene County.

Brown said such storm clouds can spawn tornadoes and that he, too, noticed rotation within the large storm cloud.