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Confidence votes 95.7K. A sand tornado is not truly a tornado. It is a phenomenon called a dust devil. Dust devils are whirlwinds that form when a layer of hot air forms just above the ground and rises in a relatively small, rotating column, picking up up dust or sand as it does so. Dust devils are rarely strong enough to cause damage, and are much weaker than tornadoes.
As a result, they have shorter life cycles and often wind speeds in the range of 33 to 45 mph (53 to 72 kph); that is, they rage a lot less than their stronger tornado cousins. The same holds true for landspouts and gustnadoes. Landspouts occur over solid land, but they look and act like waterspouts. As a result, they cause far less damage than supercell tornadoes. So do gustnadoes, which are weak, short-lived (but awesomely named) tornadoes that can arise along the boundary between descending cold air and warm air at the surface.