Customers at a pub in Pembrokeshire were in “shock” as they ran from what they feared was a “mini-tornado”.

In fact, what customers witnessed was a dust devil – with The Begelly Arms, near the town of Tenby, sharing footage of the phenomenon on social media.

The owner of the pub, Jackie Adams, was under the canopy outside the pub at the time.

“It was amazing. Just wondering where it was going to go,” she told Sky News.

“You can see all of us turning our heads just because the dust sort of went through the canopy. You can see the plastic on the roof of the canopy lifting up.”

Mrs Adams said the dust devil started off as a “big cloud of dust” and formed as it came toward the canopy.

The Met Office describes dust devils, also known as a willy willy, as “an upward spiralling, dust filled vortex of air”.

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Varying in height from a few feet to over 1,000, they usually occur in desert areas or in places with a high surface temperature where the ground is dry.

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Unlike tornadoes, dust devils grow upwards from the ground rather down from the clouds.

The Met Office says that while they may look like “mini-tornadoes”, they’re nowhere near as powerful or destructive.

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