A little girl from the Lajamanu town in Australia holds a fish that rained down on Sunday. Image Courtesy: Facebook
The saying goes ‘it’s raining cats and dogs’. But in a remote Australian outback town it rained fish — quite literally. No, this is no joke. On Sunday, residents of the town of Lajamanu, a small community in the arid Northern Territory, around 900 kilometre south of Darwin, were shocked when small, live fish ‘rained from the sky’.
Lajamanu local and Central Desert councillor Andrew Johnson Japanangka was quoted as telling ABC News, “We’ve seen a big storm heading up to my community and we thought it was just rain. “But when the rain started falling we saw fish falling down as well.”
Japanangka dubbed the weird phenomenon as a “blessing from the Lord”, adding that children in the town rushed to collect the live fish that were falling from the sky to store them in jars.
Queensland Museum fish expert Jeff Johnson said the fish which fell were known as spangled perch, or spangled grunters — among the most common freshwater fish in Australia.
And even though this occurrence sounds absurd and strange, it’s not the first time it has happened. A similar incident took place at Lajamanu in 2010, and it was previously recorded in 2004 and 1974. Penny McDonald, a resident of the town, told ABC News that she was around when it happened 40 years ago. “I got up in the morning, I was working in the school at the time, and the dirt streets outside my home were covered with fishes. They were small fishes and a lot of them around. It was just amazing.”
But, how do incidents like these happen?
How does it rain fish?
The fish do not really ‘rain’ in the sense of condensing out of water vapour. The fish that fall from the sky are just fish that used to be in the sea.
But, how did they reach the skies? The best explanation for this is that strong air disturbances, such as tornadoes, lift water and fish up into the air. When tornadoes traverse over bodies of water, they become known as waterspouts. These suck up water from any water body they are over along with the fish or creatures swimming in the water. The tornado then carries the fish for some distance. As it becomes weaker, the tornado loses its energy to hold objects and the fish begin to rain down on the ground.
Professor Ernest Agee from Purdue University in America’s Indiana has said to Library of Congress, “I’ve seen small ponds literally emptied of their water by a passing tornado. So, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for frogs (or other living things such as fish) to ‘rain’ from the skies.”
Though fish rain sounds like a joke, it’s real. There have been other instances when people have witnessed fish falling from the skies. Image used for representational purposes/AFP
When else has it rained fish?
Even though it sounds shocking or as a joke, the phenomena of fish raining down has happened several times in different parts of the world. In Yoro, Honduras, it rains fish every year during the late spring and early summer.
However, it happens only under specific conditions: a torrential downpour, thunder and lightning, conditions so intense that nobody dares to go outside.
The residents of Yoro call this yearly incident as Lluvia de Peces. Most locals attribute the occurrence to the prayers of Manuel de Jes?s Subirana, a Catholic missionary from Spain who in the mid-1800s asked God to help ease the Yoro region’s hunger and poverty. Soon after he issued his plea, the legend goes, the fish rain began.
In 2008, residents of Kandanassery village near Kerala were left shell-shocked when small fish started raining down towards the end of a sudden downpour.
In 2021, a city in Texas was also surprised when it began raining fish. Residents in Texarkana, almost 320 kilometres from Dallas, saw fish fall from the sky and land in their yards or sidewalks. “2021 is pulling out all the tricks … including raining fish in Texarkana today. And no, this isn’t a joke,” the city of Texarkana wrote in a Facebook post after the incident.
A similar occurrence also happened in India’s Telangana state last year. Several people in the Jagtial town of Telangana were left puzzled as they witnessed fishes raining down the sky.
Can other animals rain down?
Yes; it’s not just fish that rains down. There have been instances of other animals and birds raining down.
On 7 June 2005, thousands of frogs rained on Odzaci, a small town in northwestern Serbia. Climatologist Slavisa Ignjatovic described the phenomenon as “not very unusual” because the strong winds that accompanied the storm could have easily picked up the frogs.
Australia back in 2015 witnessed a spider spell when millions of spiders dropped from the sky in the Southern Tablelands region, blanketing the countryside with their webs. The residents said that the sun was almost blocked out by the sheer number of the baby spiders falling from the sky.
The Mirror had reported that this had taken place as the arachnids climbed up to the top of the trees and planted and then leaped off using their web silk as parachutes.
And if this wasn’t horrifying then there’s the incident of worms raining down in America’s Louisiana. On 11 July 2007, large clumps of worms began raining down from the sky in Jennings. Jennings Police Department employee Eleanor Beal reported, “All of a sudden, things started falling from the sky. … When I saw that they were crawling, I said ‘It’s worms! Get out of the way!’ I ran as fast as I could thinking I could get to shelter.”
With inputs from agencies
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