An ominous looking cloud was pictured above Newington this week.

Megan Crankshaw spotted the swirling mass in the stormy skies yesterday.

She described it as looking like a “portal to another dimension”.

Jeremy Proctor, who runs an amateur weather monitoring station from his home in Sittingbourne, confirmed it was a funnel cloud.

He said: “They are a fairly rare weather phenomenon in the UK.

“They are the result of an unstable atmosphere usually associated with a deep depression or a very active cold front.

"The cone-shaped cloud forms when a rotating column of wind draws in cloud droplets.

'If it reaches land, it becomes a tornado, or if it reaches a body of water it’s a waterspout.'

"It starts in the same way as a tornado, building around a localised area of intensely low pressure, and is typically associated with the formation of cumulonimbus thunderclouds.

“If it reaches land, it becomes a tornado, or if it reaches a body of water it’s a waterspout.”

Earlier this week a similar cloud was spotted between Dover and Deal.

Read more: All the latest news from Sittingbourne