A ‘MINI tornado’ was captured whirling through a café car park earlier this week.
The weather phenomenon shocked Copythorne Community Café dwellers on Monday as it swirled furiously outside the Cadnam cafe.
Business owner Victoria Howard-Jones said she spotted the spectacular sight at 1.50pm and it lasted between 30 and 45 seconds.
'I thought I was going to lose my car'
She said: “I was surprised as it’s not something you see every day.
“We didn’t know what it was at first, so when it looked like it moved I started filming it.
“At first, we thought it was kids messing about and then we saw it spinning.”
Victoria added that children and their parents in the café enjoyed watching the ‘mini tornado.’
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She said: “I thought I was going to lose my car. I have never seen anything like this before.”
Victoria posted her video online and it was widely shared on social media.
However, Hampshire weatherman Andy Simmonds has dispelled rumours that this was, in fact, a tornado.
A tornado? Or just the wind?
He said: “This was a dust devil and this weather phenomenon is common worldwide. Dust devils are very short-lived, and they rotate upwards.
“They are usually harmless. Here, dust devils, or whirlwinds as they are also known, often go unnoticed as they tend to form out in the countryside during the cereal harvest season.
“However, conditions like we have at the moment with a large anticyclone firmly in place over much of England, and cloudless skies along with both high air and ground temperatures, are the perfect spawning ground for dust devils to develop.
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“A vacuum of warm air sucks up waste straw or lightweight materials on the ground and swirls it into the air briefly.”
According to Andy, the difference between a dust devil and a tornado is the former has an upward rotation whereas a tornado has the opposite.
Weather conditions also have to be unstable for a tornado to appear.
Expect to see more 'mini tornados'
Head of geography and environmental science at the University of Southampton, professor Justin Sheffield said dust devils are somewhat rare in the UK.
He said: "These are actually quite common globally in desert regions and during dry conditions, but somewhat rare in the UK because you need conditions to be hot and dry, but also dusty so that they can be seen.
"With the recent dry weather and high temperatures these are more likely to form, and so I’m not surprised that one was caught on camera.
"They aren’t dangerous and only last a few seconds or minutes at most, but I would expect them to become more common with climate change bringing drier and hotter summers, especially in the south of the country."
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