Raining animals

Rain of fish in Singapore, as described by local inhabitants

Raining snakes, 1680.

Raining animals is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which flightless animals "rain" from the sky. Such occurrences have been reported in many countries throughout history. One hypothesis offered to explain this phenomenon is that strong winds traveling over water sometimes pick up creatures such as fish or frogs, and carry them for up to several miles.^[1] However, this primary aspect of the phenomenon has never been witnessed or scientifically tested. Sometimes the animals survive the fall, suggesting the animals are dropped shortly after extraction. Several witnesses of raining frogs describe the animals as startled, though healthy, and exhibiting relatively normal behavior shortly after the event. In some incidents, however, the animals are frozen to death or even completely encased in ice. There are examples where the product of the rain is not intact animals, but shredded body parts. Some cases occur just after storms having strong winds, especially during tornadoes.

However, there have been many unconfirmed cases in which rainfalls of animals have occurred in fair weather and in the absence of strong winds or waterspouts. Given that waterspouts do not actually lift anything (the water droplets visible in the column are merely condensation) and even the most intense will only raise the surface of the water by less than a meter, it lacks plausibility to suggest that they are capable of lifting fish from below the surface of the water and high into the sky. Tornadoes do not really 'lift' anything up into the column, but pick debris up and throw it outward on ballistic trajectories, where it lands in a destructive manner. Frogs, if they were to move in this way, would not be intact at the end of their journey, and fish, respiring aquatically, would likely asphyxiate long before their landing, which would be just as bad as it is for frogs. Despite the seeming scientific plausibility of the waterspout theory, upon more rigorous inspection it fails completely.^[2]

The English language idiom "it is raining cats and dogs", referring to a heavy downpour, is of uncertain etymology, and there is no evidence that it has any connection to the "raining animals" phenomenon.

This is a regular occurrence for birds, which can get killed in flight, or stunned and then fall (unlike flightless creatures, which first have to be lifted into the air by an outside force). Sometimes this happens in large groups, for instance, the blackbirds falling from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas, United States on December 31, 2010.^[3] It is common for birds to become disoriented (for example, because of bad weather or fireworks) and collide with objects such as trees or buildings, killing them or stunning them into falling to death. The number of blackbirds killed in Beebe is not spectacular considering the size of their congregations, which can be in the millions.^[4] The event in Beebe, however, captured the imagination and led to more reports in the media of birds falling from the sky across the globe, such as in Sweden and Italy,^[5] though many scientists claim such mass deaths are common occurrences but usually go unnoticed.^[6]

 History

Rain of flightless animals and objects has been reported throughout history. In first Century AD, Roman naturalist Pliny The Elder has documented storms of frogs and fishes. In 1794, French soldiers witnessed fall of toads from the Sky during heavy rain at Lalain, near French city of Lille. In 1857, people from Lake County in California reported fall of Sugar crystals from the Sky.^[7]

Explanations

Tornadoes may lift up animals into the air and deposit them miles away.

French physicist André-Marie Ampère was among the first scientists to take seriously accounts of raining animals. He tried to explain rains of frogs with a hypothesis that was accepted by other scientists of the day. Speaking in front of the Society of Natural Sciences, Ampère suggested that at times frogs and toads roam the countryside in large numbers, and that the action of violent winds can pick them up and carry them great distances.^[8]

More recently, a scientific-sounding explanation for the phenomenon has been developed that involves tornadic waterspouts.^[9] However, waterspouts are very limited in their ability to lift objects into the air, managing only drops of water and possibly light surface debris (leaves, etc), which are quickly jettisoned along ballistic trajectories. Under this hypothesis, waterspouts or tornados transport animals to relatively high altitudes, carrying them over large distances. It was mistakenly thought that the winds were capable of lifting and carrying the animals over a relatively wide area and allow them to fall in a concentrated fashion in a localized area.^[10] More specifically, it has been erroneously claimed that some tornadoes can completely suck up a pond, letting the water and animals fall some distance away in the form of a rain of animals.^[11]

This hypothesis 'appears' supported by the type of animals in these rains: small and light, usually aquatic,^[12] and by the suggestion that the rain of animals is often preceded by a storm. However the theory does not account for how all the animals involved in each individual incident would be from only one species, and not a group of similarly-sized animals from a single area. However, this waterspout hypothesis is not supported by the evidence. It has persisted in the popular imagination by a misunderstanding of what waterspouts are, and their lifting capability. Waterspouts are not capable of lifting significant weight, nor of transporting it any significant distance. People mistakenly believe that the column of the waterspout is composed of water sucked up by the vortex, but this is not the case. The column of a waterspout consists of condensation from the surrounding air.

Doppler Image from Texas showing the collision of a thunderstorm with a group of bats in flight. The color red indicates the animals flying into the storm.

In the case of birds, storms may overcome a flock in flight, especially in times of migration. The image to the right shows an example where a group of bats is overtaken by a thunderstorm.^[13] The image shows how the phenomenon could take place in some cases. In the image, the bats are in the red zone, which corresponds to winds moving away from the radar station, and enter into a mesocyclone associated with a tornado (in green). These events may occur easily with birds in flight. In contrast, it is harder to find a plausible explanation for rains of terrestrial animals; the enigma persists despite scientific studies.

Sometimes, scientists have been incredulous of extraordinary claims of rains of fish. For example, in the case of a rain of fish in Singapore in 1861, French naturalist Francis de Laporte de Castelnau explained that the supposed rain took place during a migration of walking catfish, which are capable of dragging themselves over the land from one puddle to another.^[14] Thus, he argued that the appearance of fish on the ground immediately after a rain was easily explained, as these animals usually move over soft ground or after a rain.

Occurrences

The following list is a selection of examples.

Fish

1555 engraving of rain of fish

• Singapore, February 22, 1861^[15]
• Olneyville, Rhode Island, May 15, 1900^[16]
• Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, July 1, 1903^[17]
• Marksville, Louisiana, October 23, 1947^[18]
• Kerala, India, February 12, 2008^[19]
• Bhanwad, Jamnagar, India, Oct 24, 2009^[20]
• IIT MADRAS, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Sep 12, 2013^[21]
• Lajamanu, Northern Territory, Australia, February 25 and 26, 2010,^[22]
• Loreto, Agusan del Sur, Philippines, January 13, 2012^[23][24]
• The yearly Lluvia de Peces in Yoro, Honduras

Frogs and toads

• Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, June 2009 (occurrences reported throughout the month)^[25]
• Rákóczifalva, Hungary, 18–20 June 2010 (twice)^[26]

Others

• An unidentified animal (thought to be a cow) fell in California ripped to tiny pieces on August 1, 1869; a similar incident was reported in Olympian Springs, Bath County, Kentucky in 1876^[27]
• Jellyfish fell from the sky in Bath, England, in 1894^[28]
• Spiders fell from the sky in Salta Province, Argentina on April 6, 2007.^[29]
• Worms dropped from the sky in Jennings, Louisiana, on July 11, 2007.^[30]
• According to a video, Spiders fell from the sky in Santo Antônio da Platina, Brazil, on February 3, 2013.^[31] (However, it has been suggested as falling from a mass web between elevated poles.)

 

 

 

 

SOURCE:
www.wikipedia.com