The tornado was seen snaking along the shoreline at Llandudno
© Alex BullockThe tornado was seen snaking along the shoreline at Llandudno
Onlookers caught a glimpse of a mini tornado on Friday morning as the region is set to be battered by heavy rain .

The twister stunned spectators just after 9am near West Shore in Llandudno .

A large funnel could be seen forming on the water behind Parc Llandudno retail estate before snaking along the shoreline. It then proceeded to dump water on the Victorian town.

Many eyewitnesses took to social media to share what they saw.

One onlooker wrote: "I knew I'd seen a twister!! God thought I was seeing things! I was driving up the A470 around 9.15 towards Black Cat and saw it in my mirror!"

Another joked: "Any dead goats and seagulls strewn all over the Orme?"

A spokesperson from the Met Office said: "A cold front crossed Wales overnight, bringing a slightly unstable polar maritime airmass. This combined with low-level moisture sources, mainly the sea, lead to its formation."

The weather phenomenon, also known as a waterspout, is a rotating column of water formed over water, or which moves from land to water.

Sometimes called "tornadoes over water", they have the same characteristics as a land tornado and are associated with severe thunderstorms.

Like a tornado, a waterspout consists of a low-pressure central vortex surrounded by a rotating funnel of updrafts. The vortex at the center of these storms is strong enough to suck up objects in a similar way to a land tornado.

More severe examples of waterspouts have seen the vortex suck up schools of fish, frogs or even alligators and deposit them elsewhere.