A stunned Edinburgh driver captured the moment a twister swirled around the skies above the capital in a bizarre early morning weather event.
Steven McGregor was stunned when he spied the towering whirlwind on his way to work on Tuesday, pulling over his car to grab a video of the spiral.
The short clip shows a vortex of air twirling up into the sky in a corkscrew fashion before vanishing into the morning gloom.
It is currently unknown whether the column was a rare Scottish tornado or the much more common funnel cloud.
“It was like a scene from Twister,” customer service worker Steven said.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. I had to pull the car over when I spotted it just to get a proper look.”
The Met Office describes funnel clouds - or ‘tubas’ - as “extending, spinning fingers” of cloud that reach towards, but do not actually touch, the ground.
The clouds, made up of condensed water droplets, become tornadoes when they make contact with the earth and become more violent.
Around 30-35 tornadoes are spotted in the UK every year, according to experts, but very few are recorded in Edinburgh and the Lothians.
Earlier this year, locals captured a video of wind whipping up a ‘dust tornado’ in Princes Street Gardens during a period of warm weather.
A Met Office spokesperson said: "The video appears to show a funnel cloud, which is a cone-shaped cloud that extends from the base of the cloud towards the ground but doesn’t reach the surface.
"If it were to reach the surface, it would then be called a tornado.
"Funnel clouds are a fairly common sight in the UK, especially at this time of year, and they’re essentially a rotating column of wind which draws in cloud droplets.
"Funnel clouds in the UK generally form in stormy conditions, so are often, but not always, associated with heavy rain, thunder and lightning."
