Residents in Upper Heyford were left terrified after a 330ft-high dust devil ripped through a building site.

The weather phenomenon, similar to a tornado, struck shortly after 2pm yesterday.

Tim Coggins captured a photo of the swirling tower of dust as it cast debris around and moved past his house.

He said: "It was a calm day and then the noise started happening.

"It was suddenly really noisy and a metal skip got picked up and overturned.

"It was quite frightening really, it went past our house about 20 metres away and given that it had picked up a metal skip it was quite scary."

Mr Coggins said the white dot inside the red circle in the photo is a piece of debris thrown high into the air by the dust devil.

He said: "We were quite alarmed, it is usually quite windy here because we are quite high up but it was still yesterday.

"Then all hell broke loose."

The dust devil can be seen in the video beside a water tower which locals say is home to bats and newts.

The weather phenomenon lasted for about two minutes before disappearing.

Dust devils form when hot air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler, low-pressure air above.

The air may then start to rotate and as the air rises rapidly the column of hot air is stretched vertically.

This moves mass closer to the axis of rotation and leads to an intensification of the spinning effect.

They can reach up to 10m wide and 1,000m tall.