You wouldn’t believe some of the things that have fallen from the skies around the world!
Getting drenched by a heavy downpour may be one thing, but imagine being showered by thousands of flapping fish!
If you think that’s bad, then how about an entire elite army of spiders? These are the things of nightmares.
You’d better run for cover as we explore ten of the weirdest things that fell from the sky!
Falling Fish
Now, to most of us around the world, the idea of fish raining down from the sky is rather bizarre. However, in some countries, it’s actually quite the norm. So much so that in Mexico, there’s a specific name for it – “lluvia de peces,” literally meaning “rain of fish.”
So what causes this bizarre phenomenon?
Although there are several different theories on why this happens, a waterspout is the most likely explanation.
These are basically tornadoes, but over water, and it sucks the fish up from bodies of water, and the wind then carries these fishy friends inland, where they are eventually rained down.
In some places, such as Honduras, communities celebrate these occurrences, welcoming the gift of free food and having a big fish fry-off with their bounty from the clouds!
Flying Frogs
Similar to fish, frogs can also fall foul of waterspouts, and there are numerous reports – both ancient and recent – of frogs raining from the sky.
Besides the obvious biblical example, Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclides Lembus wrote about so many frogs raining from the sky that “the houses and the roads have been full of them”!
More recently, Serbia saw thousands of teeny tiny froglings rain from the skies in 2005 with a passing thunderstorm.
Somewhat surprisingly, the Serbian froglings survived their lengthy fall, reportedly jumping up and hopping away upon landing!
Blood… or not?
In 2014, residents of Zamora in northwestern Spain woke up to a startling scene.
Blood had rained down onto their sleepy town overnight and coated the town in a grisly red hue.
The residents of Zamora quickly set about trying to figure out just what had happened.
To their shock and horror, they found that the son of Satan had risen, bringing with him apocalyptic rain made from the blood of the damned– no, wait, that never happened.
It was algae. That’s right – boring old algae!
The microalgae in question weren’t native to Spain and had become trapped in a stormcloud that had distressed it, causing the microalgae to turn red.
The cloud then dumped its faux-bloody contents all over Zamora as the city slept – giving the impression of a town coated in blood!
Candy Storm
In Lake County, California, people experienced what it was like to live at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory when it rained candy twice in 1987.
Author Lyman L. Palmer described the occasion, where lumps of crystallized sugar almost a ¼ inch in size fell to the Earth from the skies, as a “very uncommon and curious phenomenon.”
Well, you don’t say!
And, just like the Hondurans with their fishy rain, the residents of Lake County took great joy from the sugary happening, making syrup from the candy rain!
Mystery Meat
In Kentucky on March 3, 1876, a field in Bath County was showered by a steady rain of mystery meat!
The Kentucky Meat Shower, as it came to be known, unfolded over the course of only a few minutes and puzzled everyone – especially the two men who witnessed it.
The two men who bore witness couldn’t decide whether the mystery meat was mutton or venison, and another person said that it was bear meat… nobody asked that guy how he knew what bear meat looks like.
Later analysts have suggested it might be a type of cyanobacteria that congealed into a fleshy jelly after being rained on. Others think it might have been regurgitated meat from a buzzard.
Although we may never know, we’ll certainly never forget The Kentucky Meat Shower!
Sprinkling Spiders
Now, this one is the scariest living nightmare an arachnophobe could face – even scarier when you find out it’s not actually that uncommon!
In 2015, thousands of baby spiders rained down from the sky onto Australia!
As the land of natural horrors, it’s not surprising in the slightest this happened in Australia – with one Australian man saying so many had fallen on his house that it looked “abandoned and taken over by spiders”!
It also happened in Brazil in 2019, and I’ve also seen the occasional spider “falling” from the skies myself.
The reason behind this is actually fascinating. Baby spiders, wanting to travel great distances, will climb a tree and spin themselves a little silk parachute.
As they’re so tiny and weightless, and their silk is also lighter in weight than they are, a passing breeze will pick them up, launching them to soar and glide to a new home.
So if you happen to witness some baby spiders falling through the skies, just know they’re paragliding away to a new home!
Golf Balls
Now, for anyone who lives in Tornado Alley, whopping big hailstones the size of golf balls probably wouldn’t be all that weird.
So it’s a good job we’re talking actual golf balls and not golf ball-sized hail then!
This was the case in Punta Gorda, Florida, when dozens of golf balls rained down from the sky in 1969.
The whole incident is strange enough, but what made it even stranger is that no local golf courses reported any golf balls stolen or missing!
The best idea that anyone had over what caused it? Yup, you guessed it, waterspout over the golf course pond sucking up all the lost golf balls!
Money, Money, Money!
Compared to mystery meat, spiders, fish, and frogs, this one has to be the best type of rain ever to fall! And it’s something that’s happened on multiple occasions!
In 2015, 2 – 3 million (UAE) dirham (that’s roughly $544k – $817k) in notes fell from the sky onto Kuwait City over the course of a few minutes.
People stopped their cars in the streets and got out to run around and pick it all up like they’re in the final of The Crystal Maze!
In Indianapolis in 2017, an electrician noticed $200 blowing off the roof of the building where he was working.
In both this case and the case in Kuwait City, it was never found where the money originated from.
But who cares? Finder’s keepers, I say!
Boiled Bats
In January 2018, the Earth’s version of Pandora’s Box, Australia, gave the world boiled bat rain!
This is something that the residents of Campbelltown had to put up with when a heatwave launched local temperatures way up to 111.5 degrees F – that’s 25.5 degrees F higher than the local bat species could stand.
This caused the bats to start overheating to death and falling out of the trees.
During the Campbelltown boiled bat rain, more than 200 boiled bats were discovered littering the floor of the local area.
Space Junk
No, I’m not talking about that funky Wang Chung tune from The Walking Dead. I’m talking literal space junk.
A lot of artificial rubble falls from outer space to Earth eventually, having lost its stream in orbit and tumbling toward the gravitational pull of our planet.
For the most part, as space junk breaks up into rather small fragments upon re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, it doesn’t usually pose a threat to people.
However, in March 2018, China’s Tiangong-1 prototype space station crashed into the Pacific Ocean on its controlled re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere – making a big splash when it did!
That said, you still have greater odds of winning the lottery than you do of being killed by falling space junk!
So there you have it, the 10 weirdest things that fell from the sky!
Out of them all, I’d think the one I’d be most worried about would have to be the mystery meat.
Strange, I know, but I’d definitely end up frying some and getting food poisoning for my troubles!
