VILLAGE drinkers were forced to flee and take shelter in a pub after a “mini tornado” – or dust devil – ripped through the car park.
CCTV footage from a pub captured the moment punters ran away from what appeared to be a swirling dust cloud.
It comes as the Met Office has issued a rare amber warning lasting 24 hours – as thunderstorms and “danger to life” floods hit the nation today.
An amber rain warning will come into force for north Wales, north west England, West Yorkshire and Derbyshire at noon.
Fast flowing or deep floodwater is likely, posing a serious danger to life.
There is a good chance some communities will be cut off by flooded roads.
The dust devil video shows the whirlwind seemingly appear out of nowhere among the parked cars, moving forward quickly.
Suddenly noticing it coming at them, a man and a woman are seen running through the beer garden to the pub entrance.
Another punter is seen running towards a table to save his drink as the swirling mass disappears over the building.
The Begelly Arms in Begelly, Pembrokeshire, shared the clip on Facebook and said that the village had experienced a “mini tornado” on Sunday, May 19.
But the Met Office says the phenomenon was not a tornado, but a ‘dust devil’ – also known as a ‘willy willy’.
They describe a dust devil as an “upward spiralling, dust filled vortex of air that may vary in height from a few feet to over 1,000”.
A Met Office spokesperson told The Sun: “This isn’t a tornado, it’s something called a ‘dust devil’, rather than forming from cloud and growing down towards the ground like tornadoes, dust devils develop up from the ground due to a rising column of air.
“You can see that it is a very sunny day with no clouds, so certainly not a tornado.”
But the sight of one outside The Begelly Arms – near the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park – spooked customers.
Pub owner Peter Adams, 66, said the dust devil “came out of nowhere” on a sunny and still day and lasted around 30 seconds.
“My wife and I were sitting outside talking to one of our customers.
We were just sitting there and having a quiet drink under the canopy,” he said.
“Then we heard a car alarm go off, looked round, and [the dust devil] is the first thing we saw.”
He added: “We didn’t know what to expect…we all braced ourselves quickly and put our hands over the tops of the drinks.
Dust devils are strong, well-formed, and relatively short-lived whirlwinds.
They range in size from just half a metre wide and a few metres tall to more than 10 metres wide and half a mile high.
Both dust devils and tornadoes are a weather phenomenon involving a vertical rotating column of wind, but they are not the same.
Tornadoes form on the back of a supercell thunderstorm, while dust devils form as a swirling updraft under sunny conditions during fair weather.
And while they rarely come close to the intensity of a tornado, but on can grow large enough to pose a threat to people and property.
” hit the actual [canopy] where we were sitting, and I think it must have stopped it in its tracks.”
He explained that they first thought it was a funnel cloud – which form in the sky and turn into tornadoes if they reach the ground – as there had previously been a couple of sightings in the area.
He added: “I’ve never seen one like that before. You see gusts of winds now and again, but I’ve never seen one coming across the car park like that, moving as if it was being radio-controlled…It was quite strange to watch.”
