You know the phrase ‘its raining cats and dogs’? You know the song ‘its raining men’? Well, you just wait until you hear ‘Jesus Christ, get indoors, its raining fish.’
Over the centuries, there have been periodical reports of ‘things falling from the sky that shouldn’t’. This isn’t a case of space debris, meteors or aliens, this is rather more terrestrial and…scaly.
With historical evidence that Sharknado could only dream of, fish-falls have been recorded for centuries. In the first century AD, Pliny the Elder wrote about storms of fish and frogs, woodcut prints show fish and snake falls of the 16th and 17th centuries, and in 1794 French soldiers watched toads fall from the sky after battle. There are countless examples across the world, and across time. Whether its fish, frogs, snakes or notebooks, one thing remains the same – and in the words of Creedence Clearwater Revival… ‘It came out of the sky.’
Back in 1859, John Lewis of Aberdare wrote in his diary of a strange incident:
‘On Wednesday, February 9, I was getting out a piece of timber…when I was startled by something falling all over me – down my neck, on my head, and on my back. On putting my hand down my neck I was surprised to find they were little fish. By this time I saw the whole ground covered with them. I took off my hat, the brim of which was full of them. They were jumping all about. They covered the ground in a long strip about 80 yards by 12, as we measured afterwards…My mates and I might have gathered bucketsfuls [sic] of them, scraping with our hands.’[1]
What covered John were thousands of small minnows; a shoal of airborne freshwater fish. It had been no prank, but an act of God, and one that continues to be replicated.
Decades later, in August 1918, the people of Hendon, Sunderland experienced a sudden, violent rainfall, disturbing a group of gardeners working on their allotments. As the green-fingered folk ran for shelter in their sheds, they noticed that the rain was making rather large ‘thumps’ on their roofs. There were raindrops, sure, but also small fish. Over an estimated period of ten minutes, the fish-fall had covered about a ‘third of an acre’, with hundreds of fish scattered across the ground. The fish were identified as sand eels, and stranger still, some of them broke on impact. So brittle and stiff were some of the fish that they fell like crackers, some entering the soil like toothpicks, other snapping into pieces. This was taken to mean that these fish had been out of the water for some time, drying in the heavens.
While fish may seem rather grim, frogs might be a little more uplifting – not all of these were dead! In June 1979, Vida McWilliam of Bedford found frogspawn and hundreds of tiny frogs scattered all over her garden, hopping all over the grass and hanging from bushes. She didn’t see them fall personally, but it appeared to be another case of a [creature] fall. Many frog-fall detractors have suggested that the frogs may have been there already, sheltering, however in such vast numbers? And hanging from bushes? One witness commented on how they couldn’t walk without treading on some of them.
A few years later, in 1984, East Ham and Canning Town in London experienced another fish-fall, where flounders and smelts (both tiny fish) were found covering houses and gardens for seemingly no reason. With these fish, it was believed that they had fallen with the previous night’s heavy rain. In the same year, during a hailstorm in Mississippi, a gopher turtle, fully encased in ice fell from the sky.
But not all ‘-falls’ have a pulse, Britain has had centuries of strange and small inanimate objects falling from the sky. In March 1977, a couple walking home from church in Bristol found themselves caught in a shower of hazelnuts. Several hundred nuts fell from the sky, which was a ‘practically clear and blue with one cloud drifting over.’ Never to waste a good nutfall, Mr Alfred Osbourne gathered as many as he could and brought them home to eat. Remarking on the taste, he said they were ‘sweet, fresh and quite delicious.’ A similar tale happened in Dublin in 1867 where vast amounts of hazelnuts fell during a rainstorm, and were found to have been partly fossilised in a peat bog!
Other British -falls have included eggs, grass, cress, mustard seeds, beans and peas. Another common ‘-fall’ is ice, where blocks of ice fall from the sky, seemingly without reason. However, many of these have been explained by passing planes accidentally dislodging chunks of ice from the outside of the craft.
In recent years, the remote outback Australian community of Lajamanu has experienced several fish falls, where live fish fell from the sky and local children rushed outside, trying to catch them and keep them in jars![2] According to NDTV and local ichthyologist Jeff Johnson, ‘the fish which fell in Lajamanu were known as spangled perch, or spangled grunters, among the most common freshwater fish in Australia. Meanwhile, Michael Hammer, Curator of Fishes at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory claimed it was “not unusual” for fish to rain down alive, as long as they weren’t raised too high and frozen in mid-air.’
So why on earth does this happen and how did they all get into the sky?
One curious similarity across most reports is that one type of object appears to fall at once – there may be fish, but there isn’t anything else from the riverbed. Obviously, one option is that its ghosts, aliens or celestial goblins having a laugh (and many do claim that these are examples of poltergeist activity), another is teleportation, but more mundane options are probably the culprit.
Many small, light objects – like grass and hay – can be picked up and moved by strong winds, others – such as small fish – can be picked up by waterspouts and tornadoes, which such water and fish upwards. The fish/frogs/nuts can then be carried for miles before a storm finally strikes and they are dropped, en masse, atop some baffled pensioners.
While I haven’t experienced a fish-fall yet, I live in hope of being battered by a rogue perch while I walk to the car.
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References and sources:
Tornadoes, Dark Days, Anomalous Precipitation, and Related Weather Phenomena by William Corliss
Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World (TV)
Fortean Times issue 35
Modern Mysteries of Britain – Janet and Colin Bord (1987)
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/can-prove-worlds-fishiest-tales-2258164
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-21/outback-community-fish-rain-sky-weather-event/102002588
[1] http://anomalyinfo.com/Stories/pre-1865-february-9-fish-fall-80-yard-strip-land
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