14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, we found out that an unusual phenomenon occurred in a village in western Sri Lanka and left residents baffled, as a rainfall of small fish fell from the sky during a storm. Reports of strange objects falling down from heavens are not exactly new, and it’s a known fact that weird rainfalls have been happening for a long time.
Even from Biblical times, there have been accounts of unusual things coming down from heaven, like bread or frogs, but things got even more bizarre since then. From time to time, we hear stories about weird rainfalls in different areas around the globe, but the phenomenon still remains largely unexplained.
Many have said that the logical explanation for the odd occurrences is that strong whirlwinds form over shallow waters and suck in almost any kind of small creatures and carry them over large distances before dropping them down along with the rain. However, this hypothesis is not valid for all of the documented “exotic” rainfalls.
After this week’s report about the downpour of fish in Sri Lanka, I started looking for similar stories about other strange and unexpected things that have reportedly fallen from the skies. And I must confess I was impressed by the high number of such reports and the strangeness of the objects that came raining down. From fish, frogs, spiders and worms to raw meat and money, each story is unique and has bewildered humans at some point in history.
Animals make up the majority of odd rains, with fish and frogs leading the pack. Among the most bizarre incidents, we can mention a rain of frogs in Scotland in 1995, when a considerably wide area was blanketed with hundreds of little green animals that dropped from the sky during a storm. A family reported they were driving through Scotland on holiday when a strong storm began, and along with the heavy rain, scores of frogs suddenly pelted their car.
And a rain of baby alligators supposedly poured over a South Carolina farm in 1877. J. L. Smith, the owner of the farm, claimed that several one-foot (0.30m) long alligators fell from the skies and that they landed unharmed and started crawling around.
As for the fish rainfalls, they seem to be the most common of all, with reports periodically coming from all over the world. However, the most affected place seems to be a remote community on the edge of the Tanami Desert, called Lajamanu, which has been bombarded by fins from above in several occasions. Most recently, the locals reported the odd phenomenon in 2004, and then not once, but twice in February 2010.
Another weird rainfall happened in April 2007 in Salta Province, Argentina. Back then, a rain of spiders frightened a group of friends who were on a trip in Salta Province during their Easter vacation. While they were hiking into the San Bernardo Mountain, the group noticed the ground around them was blanketed with multi-colored spiders, and when they looked up, they realized the spiders were actually falling from the sky.
Worms are also among the creatures that pelted people at some point. In 2001, for instance, a soccer game at the Galashiels Academy in the United Kingdom was interrupted when the students were suddenly pelted with clumps of earthworms that seemed to be raining from the sky. The weird thing about this incident is that while many have said that freaky weather was to blame for the occurrence, it turns out it was a sunny clear day.
If you think worms are gross, you should probably abstain from reading the next paragraph, as it presents an even grosser incident.
In March 1876, in the little Kentucky town of Olympia Springs, it was raining meat. Raw meat, that is, probably coming from dead animals. The chunks rained down in the backyard of one Allen Crouch, and it was believed that a pack of buzzards had probably devoured some dead horses and then expelled the meat during flight.
A similar incident happened in October 2012 in Virginia, when a sudden meatfall impacted a teenager’s horseback riding lesson. It was agreed that high-flying seagulls were probably responsible for the freaky rainfall.
Finally, I would like to wrap up my short list of bizarre rainfalls with an incident we all wish it would happen more often: a downpour of money. Unfortunately, only a handful of people had the opportunity to witness this miracle. In 1957, thousands of 1000 franc notes fell from the sky in the small town of Bourges, France, while in December of the same year, hundreds of one dollar bills poured down over Chicago, Illinois. A similar story comes from Germany, where a motorist saw money flying on the highway in 2007.
After all these weird accounts, I have one more thing to say: Watch your heads! You never know what may fall from above.