This is the bizarre moment a ‘mini tornado’ twists in a woman’s frying pan after she opened a window and switched on the extractor fan.

The incident was filmed in the city of Dalian in the north-eastern Chinese province of Liaoning on 13th November.

In the footage, Ms Shi is heard shrieking in her kitchen as the mini tornado twists in the frying pan.

According to the news site Baidu, she was cooking at home when the ‘mini tornado’ appeared in the pan just after she added oil.

Ms Shi said she does not cook often and on this occasion she opened the window and switched on the extractor fan.

She said that when she poured the oil into the pan, the mini tornado appeared.

Ms Shi added that she was surprised by the appearance of the mini twister and asked netizens for their thoughts on how it could have happened.

The Weibo group ‘Local Climate’ said: “Ms Shi perfectly reproduces the weather conditions for tornados. The underlying surface is hot and unevenly heated (oil in the pan), the air is dry (kitchen with heat on a sunny day) and there is strong suction from above (extractor fan).”