The project is unusual in the world of precipitation. The most unusual precipitation
Rain is a common occurrence for people, so it's not surprising. Rain, thunderstorm, downpour, hail... It happens and all this is in the order of things. But today we want to tell you about the most unusual rains in the world, the sight of which will simply make your jaw drop.
1. Rain of money. It sounds cool, but there was nothing to be particularly happy about. Shortly before the Great Patriotic War it rained in Meshchery antique coins 16th century. But to an ordinary citizen At that time, they were unnecessary, since they could not be used to buy anything in the store. This is explained by the fact that during severe bad weather heavy rain washed away the treasure from under the Earth, and the strong hurricane wind raised this money up.
2. Rain of fish. This phenomenon happened more than once. In England in 1918 there was a rain of fish fry, in the USA in 1892 there was a rain of eels. And in Indian settlements, rain of fish is not such a big deal at all. a rare event.
3. In France (and in Spain too) it rained from. That's lucky. In a country where frog legs are a delicacy, the rain brought these particular amphibians. And not so long ago, exactly the same situation occurred in Japan. Hordes of tadpoles and frogs also fell from the sky.
4. But frogs are nothing. Here in the USA in 1877, one of the farms was attacked by... alligators! This is the kind of gift from heaven that awaited the residents of this farm.
5. Bloody rain. These precipitations at one time frightened great amount residents of Sri Lanka. This rain fell for 1.5 months and residents saw the bloody rain as an unkind sign. But scientists conducted research and found that the rain turns red due to spores. local species lichens. Sometimes such rains occur due to increased acidity, red dust or microorganisms.
6. Rain of worms. Although not dangerous, it is definitely disgusting. In 2011, such an incident occurred on the territory of one of the schools in Scotland. It was assumed that the earthworms were brought here by the wind, but that day it was very quiet and clear weather. An explanation for this phenomenon has not yet been found. Perhaps this is someone's prank.
7. We have already talked about fish rain above, but this species deserves a separate point. In Honduras, every year at approximately the same time (May-June), a black cloud hangs over the sky from which sardines literally spill out. Local residents love this time very much and are happy to collect all the fish for themselves. They even sang about this rain in their folklore.
8. In one of the provinces of Argentina in 2007, arthropods 10 cm in size fell from the sky, and not the small ones we are used to seeing, but arthropods 10 cm in size. Not the most pleasant sight.
9. Rain of jellyfish. Such rains are not such a rare occurrence and, as a rule, such rains occur tens or even hundreds of kilometers from the coast. Such precipitation was recorded in Japan, the USA, China and even Russia.
10. In Sweden in 2011, it rained several hundred dead birds (crows and jackdaws). In the same year, a similar rain fell in the United States, but only dead blackbirds, and the number of birds was no longer in the hundreds, but in the thousands.
It is assumed that the main cause of such rains of animals is a combination of various rainfalls, tornadoes and winds, which can transport fauna hundreds of kilometers from their last location. True, again this has not been confirmed. And there are even many scientists who refute this theory.
People different countries At all times, unusual rains were reported: colored water poured from the sky or some unexpected objects or even animals fell. Such stories could be considered legends, someone's fantasy or a joke, but similar messages continue to arrive today. Scientists have long found a reasonable explanation for these strange phenomena. It is believed that a powerful wind current lifts and carries animals away from their usual environment and transports them over long distances.
Silver and gold
Everyone dreams of a shower of money, and it actually happens sometimes. June 17, 1940 at Nizhny Novgorod region near the village of Meshchera, silver and gold coins of the 16th-17th centuries fell from the sky - about 1000 pieces in total. It turned out that during a thunderstorm the treasure with coins was washed away, the surging hurricane lifted them into the air and, to the amazement and joy of the local residents, threw them into the Meshcher area.
frogs
In 2005, in the village of Kaja Djanovik, Serbia, frogs fell from the sky. “Thousands of frogs fell on us along with the rain,” local resident Alexander Cyrik said at the time. His neighbors testified to the enormous gray cloud and wondered: could the reptiles have fallen out of some exploding plane? Ecologist Slavic Ignatovich had a simple explanation: “A strong whirlwind pulled the frogs near a lake or other body of water somewhere far away and brought them here, where they fell during the rain. It's rare, but known to science phenomenon". In 2009, a frog shower was reported in Japan in several cities in Ishikawa Prefecture. In 2010, frog rain fell in the town of Rakozzifalva in Croatia.
Fruit hail
In 2011, residents English city Coventry complained about the rain of apples - hundreds of fruits fell from the sky. “It was so unexpected and incomprehensible that everyone simply became numb,” said one of the eyewitnesses of the events. Fortunately, no one was hurt, although many cars were badly damaged. Meteorologists blamed hurricane winds. Some Britons also spotted carrots and cabbage among the apples.
Colored showers
IN Indian state Kerala in 2001 passed blood red rain. It rained for two months. The residents were scared and saw the colored rain as a bad sign. Scientists hastened to reassure the population: laboratory tests showed that the rain turned red due to spores of local lichen. In 2012 bloody rain also occurred in Sri Lanka. Scientists note that red rain also occurs in areas of high acidity or due to dust storms. Colored precipitation, although rare, is not an unprecedented phenomenon. In February of this year in Saratov region orange snow fell: it turned out that a cyclone coming from North Africa brought with it particles of sand from the desert. In 2006, pink snow fell in Colorado, and eyewitnesses say it smelled like watermelon.
Blackbirds and Jackdaws
Birds falling dead from the sky is, of course, less surprising than Marine life, but it all depends on the scale of such “rain”. In Arkansas New Year's Eve As of 2011, thousands of blackbirds have fallen from the sky. There were especially many of them in the city of Bib. Ornithologists who examined bird corpses in laboratories diagnosed blackbirds with physical injuries - they died from an impact, but not on the ground, but as if they had collided with some objects. Scientists came to the conclusion that New Year's firecrackers and fireworks were to blame for everything. Another version was also expressed: that the birds got into thundercloud and lost their way, and since they had poor eyesight, they began to bump into houses, trees and fell, dying from their injuries. A few days later, a rain of dead jackdaws, crows and magpies fell on the Swedish city of Falkoping - residents then found 10,000 dead birds.
Earthworms
In 2011, earthworms were reported to fall in Scotland. They fell from the sky onto the stadium of one of the schools, where a physical education class was in progress. Teacher David Crichton was forced to interrupt the lesson and send the children to shelter. Then the teacher and his students collected worms for a long time to show them to their colleagues and scientists: in total, he found 120 worms within a radius of 92 m. City scientists put forward the idea that the worms were carried by the wind, but on that day the weather was calm and clear, so there are no explanations the phenomenon was never found. In 2007, Eleanor Beal, a police officer from Jennings, USA, also reported a ball of swarming worms falling from the sky.
Sardines and shrimp
The fish shower in Honduras occurs annually at approximately the same time: between May and July. And in approximately the same place: not far from the city of Yoro. Sardines fall from the sky and are happily collected local residents. According to eyewitnesses, the phenomenon begins at five or six in the evening: a black cloud hangs over the ground, thunder rumbles, lightning flashes, puddles are filled with fish. This phenomenon was described in Honduran folklore: “Where the fish the rain will pass like a heavenly miracle,” is sung in an old song.
The fact of fish rains was confirmed by Christian missionaries in early XVIII centuries and scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Residents consider the sardine rain a miracle, which the Spanish Catholic missionary José Manuel Subiran prayed for them in the mid-19th century. Scientists have their own explanation: strong winds and tornadoes bring fish from Atlantic Ocean.
Since 1998, Yoro has hosted an annual Fish Rain Festival. Isolated cases of seafood rainfall occur in other parts of the world. In May 2014, there was a fish rain in Sri Lanka: residents collected 50 kg of catch; two years earlier, there was a rain of shrimp here. The Australians, the Greeks, the British, and peasants from the south of Ethiopia reported about the rains of fish: they were horrified when, during field work, “the skies opened up” and half-dead, convulsing fish fell from there.
It rained spiders in Australia
Millions of small spiders flying from the sky have residents of Goulburn thinking about the end of the world.
Eyewitnesses of the spider rain that took place in the city of Goulburn in New South Wales were the first to report an unusual atmospheric phenomenon V in social networks. “The whole area and my house were covered in small black spiders, I looked up at the sun and saw a lot of strands of web going up a couple of hundred meters into the sky,” said local resident Ian Watson, who was one of the first to report the event on the town’s community page in on the Internet. Soon, scientists were found who explained that spider rain is not a sign of an impending apocalypse, but a natural a natural phenomenon. As Martin Robinson, a naturalist from the Australian Museum, said, spiders use the method of “aeronautics” during the migration process. These animals weave webs on the tops of trees, then the wind picks them up along with the network and throws them over long distances. According to the scientist, spiders can “hover” at an altitude of up to 3 km above the ground.
“They can travel, moving for many kilometers - it is this ability that explains the fact that spiders are found on every continent. They regularly appear even in Antarctica, but then die,” Robinson said. — In this phenomenon one can also find the answer to the question why on the new islands that arose as a result volcanic activity, the first land animals are usually spiders.”
Precipitation from space
Tornadoes, tornadoes and hurricanes bring a lot of surprises to people: golf balls, nails, rubber galoshes, marbles, etc. But there are times when the wind has nothing to do with it. Meteorites, airplane debris, space debris are falling from the sky... Since the fall of the first satellite in 1957, more than 20,000 objects from space have fallen to Earth: on average, about 400 such debris fall per year. The latest incident occurred in the suburbs of Chita in April of this year: a mysterious object fell from the sky and exploded, frightening eyewitnesses. After checking, it turned out that it was a military apparatus, and not a UFO at all, as local residents thought.
People from different countries at all times reported unusual rains: colored water poured from the sky or some unexpected objects or even animals fell. Such stories could be considered legends, someone's fantasy or a joke, but similar messages continue to arrive today. For example, it recently rained spiders in Australia, which has plenty of evidence on the Internet. Scientists have long found a reasonable explanation for these strange phenomena. It is believed that a powerful wind current lifts and carries animals away from their usual environment and transports them over long distances.
We will tell you about ten of the most unusual rains of recent times, which have received publicity in the media and have witnesses.
(Total 11 photos)
Silver and gold
1. Everyone dreams of a rain of money, and it really happens sometimes. On June 17, 1940, in the Nizhny Novgorod region near the village of Meshchery, silver and gold coins of the 16th–17th centuries fell from the sky - about 1000 pieces in total. It turned out that during a thunderstorm the treasure with coins was washed away, the surging hurricane lifted them into the air and, to the amazement and joy of the local residents, threw them into the Meshcher area.
frogs
2. In 2005 in Serbia, in the village of Kadzha Dzhanovik, frogs fell from the sky. “Thousands of frogs fell on us along with the rain,” local resident Alexander Cyrik said at the time. His neighbors testified to a huge gray cloud and wondered if the reptiles could have fallen out of some exploding plane? Ecologist Slavic Ignatovich had a simple explanation: “A strong whirlwind pulled the frogs near a lake or other body of water somewhere far away and brought them here, where they fell during the rain. This is a rare phenomenon, but known to science.” In 2009, a shower of frogs was reported in Japan in several cities in Ishikawa Prefecture. In 2010, frog rain fell in the town of Rakozzifalva in Croatia.
Fruit hail
3. In 2011, residents of the English city of Coventry complained of apple rain - hundreds of fruits fell from the sky.
4. “It was so unexpected and incomprehensible that everyone simply became numb,” said one of the eyewitnesses of the events. Fortunately, no one was hurt, although many cars were badly damaged.
5. Meteorologists considered hurricane winds to be the culprit. Some Britons also spotted carrots and cabbage among the apples.
Colored showers
6. In the Indian state of Kerala in 2001 there was blood-red rain. It rained for two months. The residents were scared and saw the colored rain as a bad sign. Scientists hastened to reassure the population: laboratory tests showed that the rain turned red due to spores of local lichen. In 2012, bloody rain also fell in Sri Lanka. Scientists note that red rain also occurs in areas of high acidity or due to dust storms.
Colored precipitation, although rare, is not an unprecedented phenomenon. In February of this year, orange snow fell in the Saratov region: it turned out that a cyclone that came from North Africa brought with it particles of sand from the desert. In 2006, pink snow fell in Colorado, and eyewitnesses say it smelled like watermelon.
Blackbirds and Jackdaws
7. Birds falling dead from the sky are, of course, less surprising than sea creatures, but it all depends on the scale of such “rain.” In Arkansas, thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky on New Year's Eve 2011. There were especially many of them in the city of Bib. Ornithologists who examined the corpses of birds in laboratories diagnosed physical injuries in the blackbirds - they died from an impact, but not on the ground, but as if they had collided with some objects.
8. Scientists have come to the conclusion that New Year's firecrackers and fireworks are to blame for everything. Another version was also expressed: that the birds were caught in a thundercloud and lost their way, and since they have poor eyesight, they began to bump into houses, trees and fell, dying from their injuries. A few days later, a rain of dead jackdaws, crows and magpies fell on the Swedish city of Falkoping - residents then found 10,000 dead birds.
Earthworms
9. In 2011, earthworms were reported to have fallen in Scotland. They fell from the sky onto the stadium of one of the schools, where a physical education class was in progress. Teacher David Crichton was forced to interrupt the lesson and send the children to shelter. Then the teacher and his students collected worms for a long time to show them to colleagues and scientists: in total, he found 120 worms within a radius of 92 m. City scientists put forward the idea that the worms were carried by the wind, but the weather was calm and clear that day, so there are no explanations the phenomenon was never found.
In 2007, Eleanor Beal, a police officer from Jennings, USA, also reported a ball of swarming worms falling from the sky.
Sardines and shrimp
10. Fish showers in Honduras occur annually at approximately the same time: from May to July. And in approximately the same place: not far from the city of Yoro. Sardines fall from the sky, which local residents happily collect. According to eyewitnesses, the phenomenon begins at five or six in the evening: a black cloud hangs over the ground, thunder rumbles, lightning flashes, puddles fill with fish.
This phenomenon was described in Honduran folklore: “Where the fish rain falls like a heavenly miracle,” says an old song. The fact of fish rains was confirmed by Christian missionaries at the beginning of the 18th century and the scientist Alexander von Humboldt. Residents consider the sardine rain a miracle, which the Spanish Catholic missionary José Manuel Subiran prayed for them in the mid-19th century. Scientists have their own explanation: strong winds and tornadoes bring fish from the Atlantic Ocean. Since 1998, Yoro has hosted an annual Fish Rain Festival.
Isolated cases of seafood fallout occur in other parts of the world. In May 2014, there was a fish rain in Sri Lanka: residents collected 50 kg of catch; two years earlier, there was a rain of shrimp here. The Australians, the Greeks, the British, and peasants from the south of Ethiopia reported about the rains of fish: they were horrified when, during field work, “the skies opened up” and half-dead, convulsing fish fell from there.
Precipitation from space
11. Tornadoes, tornadoes and hurricanes bring a lot of surprises to people: golf balls, nails, rubber galoshes, marbles, etc. But there are times when the wind has nothing to do with it. Meteorites, airplane debris, space debris are falling from the sky... Since the fall of the first satellite in 1957, more than 20,000 objects from space have fallen to Earth: on average, about 400 such debris fall per year. The latest incident occurred in the suburbs of Chita in April of this year: a mysterious object fell from the sky and exploded, frightening eyewitnesses. After checking, it turned out that it was a military apparatus, and not a UFO at all, as local residents thought.
If you have also encountered unusual precipitation, tell us about it in the comments.
There are a lot of unusual facts about rain. In particular, not everyone knows that a person can remain completely dry in the rain falling in the desert. The fact is that it rains in the desert, but it is impossible to know about it, since the drops do not reach the ground, evaporating under the influence of hot air.
Behind last decades More and more reports are coming from different countries about strange rains. Either colored water pours from the sky, or strange objects rain down, or even living creatures fall on your head. Some may think that these are some kind of jokes, but the following 10 incredible views precipitation of our time was recorded by numerous witnesses and received wide publicity in the media.
1. Fruit Rain, Coventry, England, 2011
Meteorologists reported that the cause of this phenomenon was a hurricane wind.
2. Rain from ancient coins of the 16th–17th centuries, p. Meshchera, Russia, 1940
content.com
During a thunderstorm, the treasure was washed away, and a hurricane lifted the coins into the air and threw them out in the Meshcher area.
3. Rain of frogs, Kadzha Dzhanovik village, Serbia, 2005
alleryhip.com
A strong whirlwind pulled the frogs out of the lake and carried them to the village.
4. Spider Rain, Goulburn, Australia, 2015
starbang.net
Biologists explain that newly born spiders of this species climb trees and spread a web that looks like a parachute, and the wind moves them over long distances. As a result, these spiders can be found in every corner of the world.
5. Red rain, Kerala, India, 2001
indiabeing.com
Laboratory tests showed that the rain was colored by spores of a local lichen.
6. Blackbird rain, Arkansas, USA, 2011
express.de
Scientists came to the conclusion that the cause of this phenomenon was New Year's firecrackers and fireworks, and there was also a second version associated with a thundercloud.
7. Rain of earthworms, Scotland, 2011
nnm.me
Biologists suggested that the worms were carried by the wind, but the weather that day was clear and calm.
8. Fish shower, Yoro, Honduras, May-July, annually
nixusblog.com
Every year at one point in this area, sardines fall from the sky, which are happily collected by local residents. The phenomenon begins at 5-6 pm. People believe that sardine rain is a miracle, and scientists are sure that the fish are brought by tornadoes from the Atlantic Ocean. Yoro has hosted the Rain of Fish Festival since 1998.
9. Wheat Rain, Spain, 1804
totalcdn.kz
Happy residents collected wheat with shovels. And later it turned out that the disaster carried grain from warehouses destroyed in northern Africa.
10. Space precipitation, Chita, Russia, 2015
m.ngzt.ru
In April of this year, an unknown flying object fell near a village in Chita. This trend recent years. The first satellite fell in 1957. Since then, more than 20 thousand objects have fallen to Earth. On average, about 400 such debris falls per year.
As you can see, the program is quite diverse. And, of course, many unusual precipitation bring people joy. But at the same time, many of them are dangerous. And we wish you only this summer good rains, giving freshness and a good harvest!
One of the most widespread biblical legends was the legend of manna from heaven. They say she fell delicious porridge from the sky straight into the bowls to all those suffering. However, in real story Unfortunately, such documented facts have not survived.
But on the contrary, there are more than enough cases of “living” rains with various swarming abominations. These showers are coming different corners planet, frightening eyewitnesses with sudden “emissions” of frogs, snakes, fish and other living creatures. Scientists have repeatedly come close to solving this phenomenon, but each time the next theory turned out to be false...
Fish day
This event, quite worthy of the stories of the well-known Baron Munchausen, took place in India. And it is no wonder that many scientists of that time did not believe in him, considering everything a fiction, newspaper duck. Judge for yourself.
To the villages located along the banks of the Brahmaputra, West wind brought scary looking a black cloud, which soon fell to the ground in a heavy downpour. But the rain was not quite ordinary - along with streams of water, some oblong objects fell from the sky, like huge hailstones.
Fish, fish are falling from the sky! - Amazed voices rang out. And indeed: the opened skies brought down “rain of fish” on the heads of the residents. Another thing was surprising about it: such fish had never been seen in these parts. The amazed people fell on their faces: if only the gods had sent them a miracle!
In the morning, crowds of believers headed to the temple of the god Vishnu. They lowered fish that had been in heaven among the gods into sacred ponds (and in India, near every large temple there is a pond).
Word of this event reached the Indian capital, and soon newspaper reporters appeared on the scene. They interviewed many witnesses. That's exactly what happened: the fish really fell from the sky. This fact was confirmed by the scientist James Principe, who after this unusual rain found several half-dead fish in the brass funnel of a rain gauge standing in the garden...
And here is a letter from Dr. R. Conney to the Royal Society of Great Britain: “On Wednesday before Easter in the year 1666, in a pasture at Cranstad, which is near Wrotham in the county of Kent, two acres of land, located far from the sea, in a place where there is a shortage waters, suddenly became covered with small fish, believed to have fallen from the sky during terrible storm with thunderstorm and rain. The fish was the size of a man’s little finger, and everyone who saw it believes that it was a juvenile hake... The truth of the event is confirmed by many who saw fish scattered throughout the field, and no fish were found in the neighboring fields.”
Another, more recent incident, described in the central press of England: “At about three o’clock in the afternoon of Saturday, August 24, 1918, the tenants of small plots in Hendon, a southern suburb of Sunderland, hid from severe thunderstorm, suddenly we saw how the fry began to fall to the ground. The fish fell on three roads and on the gardens between them. The rain washed them into ditches, and from roofs they fell down drainpipes. Local newspapers reported on the event, but the fish was considered to be juvenile herring. There is no doubt that at the specified time a large number of juveniles fell from the sky onto an area of less than a third of an acre. Was heavy rain with thunder, but without lightning, the wind, as we were told, was gusty.”
Alabama Eels
If you think that only things fall from the sky small fish, then you are wrong. Here is a report from the New York Sun for May 1892: “There has been a shower of eels in the State of Alabama. They lay in heaps on the streets, and farmers carted them away to be used as fertilizer. As experts noted, this type of eel is found in Pacific Ocean" And on October 19, 1984, large fish covered the entire freeway near Los Angeles and interrupted traffic.
In general, " fish showers"occurred at all times and in all corners of the Earth. The first reports of showers of herring and trout can be found in early Florentine meteorological records. And if you delve into newspapers, magazines and books, it turns out that “fish rains” are not so rare. American ichthyologist Dr. Gudger collected information about 78 such events that occurred in various places on the planet. The champion was the USA, where there were 12 of them. Eleven times such showers occurred over Holland, nine times in Scotland. But this list is far from complete, since the researcher did not have materials on Russia, China and many other countries.
Frogs in dough
Fish is not the only “gift from heaven.” In the 21st volume of the “History” of Heraclides Lembus it is said: “God sent such a heavy rain from frogs that houses and roads were covered with them. Many houses had to be locked, and many frogs died; they were found baked in dough, the rivers were full of them. There was nowhere to step on the ground without crushing the frog. The decomposition of their corpses filled the air with such a stench that they had to flee the country.”
But why turn to distant history? In 1973, as the Times newspaper reported, tiny toads rained down on the streets of the village of Brignelles in France from a sudden cloud. There were many thousands of them. The same thing happened earlier, in 1922, when small toads rained down on the city of Charon-sur-Saon on a clear sunny day. This case is interesting because there was no rain at all.
But a case from times closer to us can be considered curious. One day, a farmer was driving through the desert of Newark Valley, Nevada. Suddenly a storm came, and soon his entire wagon was filled with small, scurrying frogs.
But this is not the end of the unusual rains.
Seafood
According to the Daily Times, in 1881 both sides of the road leading to Worcester, which lies 50 miles from the sea, were filled with littorina. (The dictionary describes them as small sea snails.) According to eyewitnesses, snails and small crabs, the species of which could not be determined, fell from the sky during a severe thunderstorm. The explanations given in the newspaper boiled down to the fact that the fishmonger was to blame, who got rid of the “trifles” by dumping them on the way to the city.
However, this version was immediately dropped. According to city residents, market prices for seafood products were high that year. Ten bags of "dropped" seafood were sold in Worcester markets for a total of £25. A fortune.
And this example is taken from the book “Phenomena of the Book of Miracles” by J. Michel and R. Rickard: “At about three o'clock in the afternoon on Saturday a thunderstorm of extraordinary force swept over Worcester and its environs. The downpour was of extraordinary force... During the storm, a man named John Greenall hid under a canopy in his owner's garden in Comerlane Lane and saw huge masses of coastal clams crashing to the ground, sometimes burrowing deeply, sometimes bouncing off the surface. Shellfish shedding was limited to the garden area, belonging to Mr. Leeds...
There were so many shellfish that one man managed to fill two buckets. The collection continued throughout the rest of the day, even at night by the light of lanterns, and also throughout the next day.”
Bird market
So that you don’t get the impression that rains only accompany residents of water bodies, I will cite this fact.
In 1896, hundreds of birds suddenly began to fall onto the streets of Button Rouge (Louisiana), and from a completely clear sky.
Lying on the streets dead wild ducks, mockingbirds, woodpeckers and other birds that resemble canaries, but with strange plumage.
The city was filled with their carcasses. On one street alone, children collected up to a hundred pieces.
On October 7, 1954, more than a hundred birds were discovered scattered across the field and runways at Mitchell Field in the United States. Some of them had their heads broken.
One biologist performed an autopsy on the birds and found that they died of suffocation. A year later, on September 27, dozens of dead birds fell from the sky at the municipal airport near Charlotte.
The day before, hundreds of dead birds “fell out” on the streets of the city of Troy (also in the USA).
In 1969, a flock of dead ducks was discovered near St. Mary's, Maryland. The Washington Post reported that the birds had broken bones before they hit the ground.
It looked like someone had crashed into a passing flock.
Scientists tried to explain the event by the fact that supposedly migratory birds lost their way due to a strong storm.
But why did they end up in the same flock, died at the same time and fell in the same place?
There are no answers to these questions yet.
Natural surprises
In 1976 in England, in Devonshire, in the depths of winter... worms began to fall from the sky. They crawled on the frozen ground and could not bury themselves in it, it was so frozen. A similar event, also in winter, occurred in Massachusetts, when during a Blizzard an area of several acres was covered with myriads of swarming worms.
Thousands of snakes ranging from one to one and a half feet in length fell in a rainstorm over an area of just two blocks in Memphis, Tennessee on January 15, 1877. True, no one saw the fall itself, but it is difficult to imagine that such a number of creatures were hiding somewhere and then, along with the rain, showed up in a small area of the city.
A very respectable magazine, the Journal of Cycle Research, published an article in the sixties that reported that in 1573, “all around Bergen there was a rain of large yellow mice, which, having fallen into the water, hurried to crawl out onto the shore.” Another mouse rain occurred in the fall of the following year.
And many such facts can be cited. The American collector of all sorts of natural surprises, Charles Fort, described 294 cases of rain from living beings.
How many people, so many versions
But how do various living creatures get to heaven and then fall on the heads of ordinary people? If we claim to have a serious conversation, then, as it should be in scientific treatises, we will start from ancient times. Writers for a long time days gone by They did not build any hypotheses about this, but limited themselves to a bare statement of facts.
The easiest thing would be to simply deny the very fact of unusual rains. That's what they did at first. Nothing falls from above. But in the soil there are always some “seeds” of fish and frogs. When it's raining, the seeds germinate quickly - and now little frogs are jumping through the puddles.
The famous German naturalist, geographer and traveler Alexander Humboldt also denied the existence of such phenomena, considering them “naked speculation of idle minds.” He thought so not because “this cannot be, because it can never happen,” but based on what he himself saw: while traveling across South America he once saw scattered on large area ground boiled fish. And since there was a volcano nearby, he attributed the appearance of the fish to its activity - the fish was thrown out of its crater along with hot water during a small eruption.
There was an attempt to blame everything on flying flocks of birds. It was believed that overfed birds vomited food during flight. But it is not clear why suddenly the entire flock began to simultaneously cleanse their bodies of frogs and fish. Besides, what a huge flock it must be to regurgitate such an amount of food! If you consider that during rainstorms, and even more so during thunderstorms, birds try to hide somewhere, the theory looks completely fantastic.
Another interesting theory is the theory of “containers”. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” it says. — Any emptiness attracts to itself what is created to fill it. If there is a pond, there should be fish and frogs in it.” Proponents of this theory gave the following examples: hang a birdhouse and a starling or some other bird will live in it. Make the pond so that the fish like it, and it will not keep you waiting. (And if this does not happen, then something is wrong with your pond.) Mother Nature specially “inseminates” reservoirs from above. There are examples of this. In 1921, a pond was dug in Sussex (England) in November, and in May it was filled with tench. “It looked like the new pond was just shaking with the desire to have fish in it.”
Charles Fort version
There is news from another continent. In Maryland (USA), a farmer dug a ditch, which filled with water in one week, and perch up to 7 inches long immediately appeared in it. The “receptacle theory” was also used to explain the appearance of eels in mountain lakes and inland reservoirs.
An interesting hypothesis is that of the American collector of all things unusual, Charles Fort. He suggested that a certain “upper Sargasso Sea” floats above the Earth, from which unusual rains fall. (Well, just like Laputa circling above our planet, which Gulliver saw during his travels.) However, he did not insist on his version for long, soon replacing the “upper sea” with telekinesis.
Fort also came up with another argument: a fish falling from the sky is actually an atavism. Previously, reservoirs were “stocked with fish” (we had such a term at one time) exclusively in this way, but now this has begun to happen very rarely.
An important objection of opponents was the fact that often what falls from the sky is not just lifeless, but, as they say, fish that is “far from being the freshest.” What kind of dispersal of life into bodies of water can we talk about here! Fort explained this by the influence of extraneous forces that could destroy life during teleportation. What are these forces? The author of the hypothesis says nothing about this. But why frogs and fish do not fall straight into ponds, there is an answer - they are led astray by strong winds.
Yet Charles Fort was partly right when he said that ponds and lakes suitable for fish were being “seeded.” But this is not done by incomprehensible forces, but by ordinary birds, for example, ducks. Eggs stick to their paws, and, like fairy-tale travel frogs, they can do very long journey from pond to pond. It is only important that the eggs do not dry out during the flight.
It's all about the tornado
Nowadays, tornadoes are considered the generally accepted cause of rainfall with various living creatures.
Who hasn’t seen how in the summer the wind, raising dust on the road, twists it? It is exactly the same processes, only, of course, on a large scale that are capable of causing these unusual phenomena.
Typically, a tornado, or as it is called in America, a tornado, occurs when a thick layer of warm air. Its gigantic masses, like lighter ones, begin to rise upward. A zone is created low blood pressure, where it rushes from all sides cold air. A kind of funnel is formed in which warm currents rush upward in a spiral.
Although the tornado does not move very fast - several tens of kilometers per hour - the speed of the upward flows in it reaches more than 100 meters per second. From this it is clear that a tornado can pick up heavy objects and carry them over long distances. Passing through lakes and swamps, it, like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucks in the water with all its inhabitants.
Gradually the tornado loses its power. He is no longer able to hold heavy objects in his arms. Over time it breaks down. His “trunk” is pulled into the cloud, but the frenzied hurricane carries away every little thing like fish and frogs, gradually losing it.
A completely legitimate question may arise: why does a tornado suck in only frogs or only fish, and where are the algae and pebbles? This can easily be explained by the so-called “weight selection”, when heavier stones, larger fish, big frogs fall out earlier. Other little things are carried away further. And the division by type is determined by aerodynamics. For example, frogs slow down air flow faster than well-streamlined fish.
Cleaning alien containers
But then they started talking about UFOs, and immediately arose a new version. It was expressed not by some amateur, but by the famous astronomer Maurice Jessop. He claimed that fish and frogs were thrown out by aliens from their aircraft, where they are bred for food or experimentation. This occurs when cleaning containers or replacing their occupants.
This hypothesis is also confirmed by the fact that unusual precipitation occurs in a narrow strip, corresponding (as its supporters believe) to the width of the UFO hatch. And the “scattering area” of living creatures depends on the altitude of its flight. In addition, as you remember, these rains usually fall from unusual looking clouds in which flying saucers are “hiding”.
It is also interesting that if the rain itself or a downpour with a thunderstorm captures quite large territory, then the loss of fish or other creatures occurs, as you have seen, in very limited areas. There is another proof - the repeated occurrence of the same rains a few minutes later over the same place. As Jessop and his supporters say, in this case there was a UFO “freeze.”
So who is right? Not yet known. There are many holes in each hypothesis, and unusual rains, to the surprise of eyewitnesses, continue to fall...
- All about raising rabbits for meat: tips and tricks Raising rabbits for meat is the best breed
- Why does a mother rabbit eat her babies?
- Why does a mother rabbit scatter her babies immediately after giving birth?
- Soviet merino: characteristics of the productivity of fine-wool sheep and features of caring for them Merino animal