Shocked locals watched as a powerful dust devil whipped by the front of their homes in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on April 23.

Onlooker Onning Estella captured the mini-tornado weather phenomenon in a car park as several bystanders ran away from the vortex, which was picking up clouds of dust.

He said: ‘I heard the man scream before I made the video. He was running away from it. He was lucky he wasn’t hit.’

Dust devils are a type of whirlwind tornado that form when the sun heats a patch of land and the air above becomes warmer and rises quickly.

Cooler air then moves into the low-pressure gap left by the rising warm air. The new drafts of cooler air also heat up, rise and the cycle continues, picking up dust and debris making the spiral visible as it rises skywards.