An Errol riding stable owner has told of her amazement after a mini-tornado sprang up in her car park.
Carol Wivell said she expected to see a pair of red shoes — a reference to the film The Wizard of Oz — poking out from under a nearby stable building following the incident.
Video of the phenomenon was captured by yard assistant Rebecca Cromar and has gone viral after being posted on the Inchcoonans Equestrian Facebook page, racking up 24,000 views since Saturday.
The 27-second clip shows a 30ft pillar of wind and sand towering above a nearly deserted car park before crashing into a stable block, which is known as “the pea shed” due to its former use.
Carol said that on a normal weekend they would have been holding an equestrian event and the area would have been filled with cars and horses.
“An hour before my husband had harrowed the car park – gone over it and loosened up the sand and that whipped up into the air,” she said.
“It was really weird because everything was so still. The trees and the grass didn’t move and there was just this twister.
“It hit the pea shed and disappeared, but it seemed to go through the pea shed and come out the other side.”
Carol watched the mini-tornado with Rebecca and livery customer Moira Smith.
She added: “We thought we were in Kansas – we were waiting to see the red shoes underneath the pea shed.
“It wasn’t frightening. It was amazing to see it and to be able to get it on video. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Last year researchers from Manchester University showed that there had been an average of 34 tornadoes in the UK each year between 1980 and 2012.
They identified an area between London and Reading, in Berkshire, as Britain’s “tornado alley”.
