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Animal Falls: Falls Or Rains Of Animals (Frogs, Fish, Etc.)

I've heard people say they looked like bass (lake) and shad (ocean).

If they are indeed shad, they're probably gizzard or threadfin shad. These species are freshwater fish often found in lakes and reservoirs and often stocked as baitfish and food for bass.
 
I had a weird experience in the 80s as a teenager, walking with my mother and it starting to rain really heavily. Suddenly we realised the pavement was covered in hopping frogs (or toads). It was difficult to know where to step, because you thought you were going to tread on them. They were hopping and bouncing around so I was trying to avoid treading on the moving mass of live frogs or toads covering each pavement stone. I have never seen so many. I was worried I might tread on one, killing them and skidding on the poor corpse.....My mother was just really scared of them and was shrieking with fear. We were only walking to the next road along from us to feed a neighbour's cats while they were away so thankfully we didn't have too long until we got indoors again.

It was very strange. The frogs or toads just appeared so suddenly. I can't remember how long we stayed feeding the cats but possibly some time to avoid the strange weather and enjoy a good fuss of the cats. I think when we left and walked back home the frogs/toads seemed to have gone, apart from the odd one or two jumping about. This was also weird, considering how covered in frogs/toads the pavements had been on the journey there.

There are lakes in the area, and people have ponds in their gardens too. I think my mother/I rationalised it at the time as the rain was heavy and attracted the frogs/toads to the pavements.....

I hadn't heard about raining animals (apart from the cats and dogs phrase) until I read the Fortean Times in the 90s - but I remembered the incident and wondered if they might actually have been raining from the sky instead! :hahazebs:
 
The sudden frogs sounds very much like a sudden "coming out" due to the rain. Many "animal rain" stories are simply people seeing a flush of animals (or substances) on the ground that aren't supposed to be there but there can be several other explanations besides they came down with the rain.

In this recent case, the evidence is mounting that they really did "fall" from somewhere. No video yet of them actually falling which is frustrating. I wrote up a bit about it in my Weekly Weird Newsletter. https://sharonahill.substack.com/p/weekly-weird-news-for-31-december
 
If they are indeed shad, they're probably gizzard or threadfin shad. These species are freshwater fish often found in lakes and reservoirs and often stocked as baitfish and food for bass.
So this might suggest that they were near the surface and could have been blown out by wind parallel to the surface, perhaps.

I am so skeptical about the water spout "lifting" thing. They create little lift (due to pressure change) but mostly fling things about. And, no tornadoes noted with this storm.
 
The sudden frogs sounds very much like a sudden "coming out" due to the rain. ...

Agreed ... Frogs are air breathers (lacking gills), and they burrow in moist soil or mud. A heavy rain (as Earthly oddity noted occurring) can bring frogs and toads clamoring out of the ground en masse.
 
The sudden frogs sounds very much like a sudden "coming out" due to the rain. Many "animal rain" stories are simply people seeing a flush of animals (or substances) on the ground that aren't supposed to be there but there can be several other explanations besides they came down with the rain.

In this recent case, the evidence is mounting that they really did "fall" from somewhere. No video yet of them actually falling which is frustrating. I wrote up a bit about it in my Weekly Weird Newsletter. https://sharonahill.substack.com/p/weekly-weird-news-for-31-december
Yes, my mother and I thought the frogs or toads must have come out for the rain - but there were so many of them. :omg: Where on earth were they hiding? :thought: I was laughing but my mother was shrieking. I think she thought they'd jump up her trouser legs! :D

I have never seen anything like it since. Mum and I still mention it occasionally because it was so unusual.
 
"Just keep swimming"
"Just keep sw..."
"Aaaahhhh!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!"
 
Even though a tornado can generate a lot of lift, it's been mentioned before that they likely can't neatly sort items like a single species of fish and just drop that.
 
Even though a tornado can generate a lot of lift, it's been mentioned before that they likely can't neatly sort items like a single species of fish and just drop that.

Size and weight would be the determining factors for which fish might be lifted. Shad are noted for aggregating in groups / swarms, and this could have affected the distribution of species taken up and transported.
 
There are so many references that say waterspouts can suck up fish, but at the same time, they note that the lift for waterspouts is much less than tornadoes and "Most waterspouts do not suck up water; they are small and weak rotating columns of air over water."

How do we KNOW that waterspouts can suck up fish and deposit them many miles away? With tornadoes, we can trace the source of the debris (see recent news about photographs that landed many miles away from the Kentucky tornadoes). We can't do that easily with fish.

The black circle is a 10 mile radius around the Tire mart in the news reports. The red line is the general orientation of storm fronts and the blue arrow is the direction the fronts travel. There was a max wind gust of 31 MPH recorded. All are eyeballed approximate since I don't have radar or GPS accuracy. It's just to give an idea of where the fish might have come from. First guess would be the Wright Pitman Lake in the lower left.

Several residents have noted this isn't the first time they have seen something like this in the area. But this has been the most widespread and publicized.
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... How do we KNOW that waterspouts can suck up fish and deposit them many miles away? With tornadoes, we can trace the source of the debris (see recent news about photographs that landed many miles away from the Kentucky tornadoes). We can't do that easily with fish. ...

I think part of the apparent discrepancy has to do with terminology.

Both waterspouts and tornados are tornadic vortices generated under storm conditions. The power of any such vortex is largely dependent on the environment in which it forms and how long the environmental conditions afford the vortex time to develop its forces.

Waterspouts originating over lakes (and, even more rarely, over rivers) don't have a lot of water surface over which to evolve before they're moved with the winds over land (where conditions don't necessarily contributed to their continued development). 'Waterspouts' I've seen over lakes are little more than weak dust devils comprised of watery spray. These are dwarfed by the waterspouts I've seen over seas / oceans, which are every bit as large and ominous as classic overland tornados (of the thin sinuous variety).

In contrast, it's entirely possible (and more probable) that for inland cases such as this Texarkana incident the relevant agency is a relatively powerful tornado (spawned over land and accorded extended overland travel across which to develop) that passed over / through a lake or watercourse on its path.
 
Technically, any tight vortex of air over water is a waterspout. Researchers like to differentiate between "tornadic waterspouts," which are tornadoes over water, normally produced by thunderstorms; and "waterspouts," or more properly, "fair-weather waterspouts," which are more or less just dust devils over water. It seems clear to me that the nomenclature is in some need of reform. A tornado by any name, over any substrate, is dangerous!

A sufficiently strong tornado can debark trees, tear blacktop off of roads, and propel large objects considerable distances (though mostly at pretty shallow angles to the ground). Although tornadoes are not my specialty, I am not aware of any case where a tornado was documented excavating a deep hole, nor of lifting large amounts of water far into the air. Smaller objects do get lofted occasionally, though whether small aquatic animals can rise high enough this way to start icing up (as has been reported in some anomalous falls) remains speculative at best.

Size sorting, on the other hand, is understood fairly well. If a small school of similar fish were to get high into the air somehow, barring strong wind shear, it would stand a decent chance of hitting the ground at about the same time in an oval cluster.
 
Wouldn't a vortex also drop water weeds and other debris of the same weight?
 
Wouldn't a vortex also drop water weeds and other debris of the same weight?

Yes, but only if such additional materials were picked up in addition to fish. Once airborne, any / all such materials or objects would be carried and deposited in accordance with their weights and aerodynamic features (see earlier comments about "sorting" effects).
 
There were no tornadoes (or waterspouts) reported with this storm, either by visual on the ground or via radar.
 
I have never witnessed a fish/frog fall, but I have seen big hail.

The largest (exceptional, most were half that size) was a golf ball.

So this thing must by some means stay aloft long enough to form.

How long do hailstones of this size take to form?
 
I have never witnessed a fish/frog fall, but I have seen big hail.

The largest (exceptional, most were half that size) was a golf ball.

So this thing must by some means stay aloft long enough to form.

How long do hailstones of this size take to form?
Don’t know how long but they form in clouds. When they get heavy enough they fall.
 
Hailstones fall at a rate that depends on their size and shape; and on the strength of the ambient updraft keeping them aloft. Since hail can and does fall from short-lived air-mass thunderstorms, it must be able to form on timescales of a half-hour to an hour, though this number must vary depending strongly on local conditions. Hypothetical piscometeors can be assumed to stay aloft for comparable amounts of time.

There were no tornadoes (or waterspouts) reported with this storm, either by visual on the ground or via radar.

With modern, computer-assisted doppler radar, it's really difficult to miss something like that. There would have had to be a serious malfunction (that went undetected), or several people would have had to be literally sleeping at the switch. Based on this info, we can assume that in this case at least, the tornadic origin hypothesis for the piscometeors can be excluded. So, what did happen?

Before dipping into the paranormal, has anyone checked around for a practical joker with a bucket catapult?
 
Based on this info, we can assume that in this case at least, the tornadic origin hypothesis for the piscometeors can be excluded. So, what did happen?

Given the association with hail from the same storm(s) - necessarily involving a very tall storm cloud structure with strong updrafts - I suspect any fish intake occurred at a distance (from Texarkana), meaning the fish were carried aloft from relatively far away at a point much earlier in the storm front's progress.

Another possible clue may lie in the reported witness comment that many of the fishes' heads were "busted open." This makes me wonder whether the fish could have been blown to a high enough altitude to either rupture their swim bladders or temporarily encase them in ice. I don't recall any prior fish fall accounts mentioning such widespread head damage.
 
Given the association with hail from the same storm(s) - necessarily involving a very tall storm cloud structure with strong updrafts - I suspect any fish intake occurred at a distance (from Texarkana), meaning the fish were carried aloft from relatively far away at a point much earlier in the storm front's progress.

Another possible clue may lie in the reported witness comment that many of the fishes' heads were "busted open." This makes me wonder whether the fish could have been blown to a high enough altitude to either rupture their swim bladders or temporarily encase them in ice. I don't recall any prior fish fall accounts mentioning such widespread head damage.
According to the many pics, some fish were very much intact. Some, in pieces. Kind of all over the place. None, apparently, were noted as alive when they fell.
 
More on the Texas fish fall.

(can access this by turning off JavaScript in browser, but I pasted it here)

Australian writer seeks information on Texarkana falling fish phenomenon
texarkanagazette.com/news/2022/jan/08/australian-writer-seeks-information-on-texarkana
January 8, 2022

TEXARKANA -- A writer from Australia is seeking information on the rain of fish phenomenon that happened here Dec. 29.
Paul Cropper of Sydney learned about the fall of fish in Texarkana through a friend in Texas who sent him the Gazette's online story.
"He knew I was interested as we had corresponded over the rain of fish at Fulshear in Texas in 2018. I've been writing about strange phenomena since the '70s, but rains of fish are a particular interest of mine, and I've done a few articles on them. I just think they are an amazing natural mystery," Cropper said.
"The great thing about the Texarkana fall was that there were so many reports over such a wide area with so many photos and videos. I've started plotting them on a map," he said.
Cropper has written about similar falls of fish in Australia and overseas.
"It's a genuine mystery," he said. "Rains of fish have been recorded for hundreds of years, but there is still no clear evidence as to what causes the phenomenon, only theories. Some claim the fish are picked up in waterspouts from nearby lakes. Other suggest flocks of waterbirds throw up fish they have eaten in an effort to avoid the worst of the storm.
"Both theories have been put forward to explain the Texarkana event, but I think more data is required, and hopefully the people of Texarkana can help me with that."
In the Fulshear, Texas, incident in January 2018, small shad were found in an area roughly three quarters of a mile by half a mile.
"It seems pretty clear that the Texarkana fall was a lot bigger than the one at Fulshear. The fish appear to have fallen right across the city, from Texas High School over to the Regional Airport and south to Tiger Stadium," Cropper said.
Cropper would love to hear from residents who may have had fish fall at their home or business.
"I'm hoping that the fall may have been captured on a home or business security camera or dashcam. I'd also welcome any images or videos of the fish. If anyone has kept some in their freezer, that's great too, as there are University of Texas scientists who are eager to look at specimens. With all this evidence, we may have a shot at solving this amazing mystery of nature."
At least four locations in town reported a free-fall of fish either during or in the aftermath of two storms that blew through the afternoon of Dec. 29.
Among the places that pelted by fish were Discount Wheel & Tire and Tiger Stadium, both on Summerhill Road on the Texas side of town.
Arkansas-side resident Melissa Curry was the first to call the Gazette to report the strange occurrence. She and her husband were leaving their home Wednesday afternoon when they discovered as many as two dozen small fish scattered around the backyard and side yard of their Victorian home.
"There were every bit of 20 fish out here," Curry said. "We were flabbergasted."
Gary Chatelian, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Shreveport, Louisiana, said it is uncommon for fish to fall out of the sky but that it does happen.
Fish can be picked up in a water spout or tornadic winds, he said.

"They are picked up with the wind and come down like any debris does ...They could have come from anywhere. And whatever goes up must come down," he said.
(Anyone interested in sharing photos or videos with Cropper can email him at [email protected])
 
Never heard the mass bird fish vomit explanation before. You would have thought they needed all the sustenance they could get if there was a big storm on the way? Wouldn't the fish be partially digested?
 
Never heard the mass bird fish vomit explanation before. You would have thought they needed all the sustenance they could get if there was a big storm on the way? Wouldn't the fish be partially digested?
Some may be - though hard to tell when they have been run over by cars, chewed on by cats, or spatted on the ground.
 
Paul has released his detailed video providing solid evidence that fish did in fact fall from the sky in Texarkana in December.

They weren't thrown as a joke, it's not a hoax, people weren't imagining things. They fell. He's doing a fantastic job compiling more documentation with cooperation from university researchers.
 
Well, thank goodness someone is taking the time to document this event. More data is always good!

However, WRT to the video itself, viewers can be certain only that the fish fall from above the camera's field of view. Hypothetically speaking, someone could have been firing them at a steep angle with a slingshot.

But that's the trouble with documenting unusual phenomena, isn't it: If there's no video, then people say, "Why not?" If there is video, then people say, "It looks fake."

With enough evidence, perhaps the event can be considered proven, and we can move on to explaining what happened...
 
Well, thank goodness someone is taking the time to document this event. More data is always good!

However, WRT to the video itself, viewers can be certain only that the fish fall from above the camera's field of view. Hypothetically speaking, someone could have been firing them at a steep angle with a slingshot.

But that's the trouble with documenting unusual phenomena, isn't it: If there's no video, then people say, "Why not?" If there is video, then people say, "It looks fake."

With enough evidence, perhaps the event can be considered proven, and we can move on to explaining what happened...
There is documented fish falling across a large area of the city in a short time frame including the airport which has no public access. Many independent witnesses documented at the same time. But it was important to show the fish actually falling instead of, say, appearing from flooded areas.
 
I'll admit I've never been entirely sold on this phenomenon. As far back as I can remember, there have been pictures and video of a variety of things on the ground that people have claimed fell from the sky, but with nothing much beyond anecdotal evidence that's where they came from. The attempts to explain these things often seemed pretty hokey and unfounded, and apart from perhaps the odd bird vomiting up a fish mid-flight I've never been convinced these things came from the sky at all. This latest video would seem to prove that, occasionally, fish fall from the sky, that there can be minutes between them each reaching the same patch of ground (does that mean they couldn't have all been dropped from a single aircraft, or just they were so high their individual sizes and air resistance separated them?), that it can at least happen during a period of heavy rain, whether that's the only time it can happen. Whether this has any relevance to the Kentucky Meat Shower or a 1977 rain of hazelnuts in Bristol is dubious, but I'll concede that fish sometimes drop from the sky.
 
Enough simultaneous evidence across a wide area can help to counter weaknesses in any one piece. I agree that, in this case, it does look like the fish fell from the sky.

But how did they get up there? Speaking as a meteorologist, the bird-vomit hypothesis seems most appealing, mainly because swimming or wading birds are good at selectively targeting aquatic organisms from beneath the water's surface, and then efficiently transporting them into the air. Meteorological phenomena are rarely so precise, even accounting for size sorting of objects in updrafts.

Any biologists available to comment?
 
Enough simultaneous evidence across a wide area can help to counter weaknesses in any one piece. I agree that, in this case, it does look like the fish fell from the sky.

But how did they get up there? Speaking as a meteorologist, the bird-vomit hypothesis seems most appealing, mainly because swimming or wading birds are good at selectively targeting aquatic organisms from beneath the water's surface, and then efficiently transporting them into the air. Meteorological phenomena are rarely so precise, even accounting for size sorting of objects in updrafts.

Any biologists available to comment?
They are being consulted, examining the fish remains from this Texarkana event. It's my opinion that many meteorologists know nothing more about this topic than any average person. They repeat what they heard - the "waterspout" idea - even though that has no good evidence.
 
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