Strange Encounters

Raining Frogs and Other Strange Rain

It’s raining frogs and fishes! Sure we’ve all heard the term “it’s raining cats and dogs”, but seldom is this to be taken seriously. But have you ever heard that it’s raining frogs? Well, believe it or not, this is not quite as uncommon as you may think.

Everyone knows that bad weather comes from up in the clouds, rain, sleet, snow, hail and lightning. Large pieces of metal have even been known to fall from the sky at one time or another. My theory on the strange rain involves all the crap we have floating above our atmosphere gives way. But there’s plenty of information on that in my post Is Space becoming a Junk Yard. This post is going to be covering raining frogs, fish and even pieces of Earth.

Of course it’s not uncommon for a flying bird from overhead to drop the occasional frog or fish. But I’m talking about hundreds of these suckers falling from the sky all over roof tops and on golf courses.

Some Incidents of Strange Rain

All sense of nature tells us that there can not be a raining frogs storm or other animals for that matter. But it does happen. In 200 A.D. Athanaeus the Greek Historian was one of the first to actually make record of the sky raining fish. Again in the 1500s Bergen, in Norway was riddled with a rain of dead mice. Later in the 1900s Acapulco, Mexico received a downpour of live maggots. But, has it ever rained frogs? You bet it has, raining frogs has been noted in the history books for centuries in many different places.

But let’s not mistake these strange rains for only animals. In 1957 France received  rain of thousands of 1,000 franc bank notes all over the town of Bourges. Louisiana, USA was attacked by green peaches in 1961; Florida was pelted with golf balls in 1969 and in 1987 southwest England had a downpour of red rain.

To bring things a little more recent, 2004s forecast called for raining fish again splashing down on Wales. I know this is all extremely unusual and quite hard to believe, but there are some theories and explanations for all these strange rains.

Some of the Theories and Explanations

Alaska is home to what they like to call “sky mice”. But these creatures are in fact lemmings, but the deal is, during the spring, you can see their tracks suddenly appearing in areas of unmarked snow. But they don’t actually drop from the sky as some would suspect. You see, the lemmings are actually hibernating underneath the snow, and when they awaken, they will burrow up from below. Then scurrying off across the top of the new fallen snow. This will give the appearance that they’ve simply appeared from nowhere.

This simple explanation doesn’t work so well when we’re talking about raining frogs and other strange rain now does it? We all know that frogs love the wet marshes and weather. So to see frogs up on land after a good rain is not uncommon. But what is uncommon is to find them on roof tops. Now the red rains in England could be explained by the Sahara desert sand from Africa being swept up by strong winds. Even showers of small sardines that occurred in Honduras could be because of this.

Although strong winds are a possible explanation for strange rain, it doesn’t quite explain how they happen when strong winds have not been recorded. Not only that, but it’s not the best explanation for hundreds of frogs falling from the sky. The weirdest part is that even though the frogs fell, nothing else did, no mud, no snails, nothing!

Angel Hair and Marsh Paper

There have even been cases of what’s called “marsh paper” raining down from the sky. What marsh paper is, is pretty much just a clump of algae from the marsh that is intertwined with small water creatures. This stuff forms like a blanket across the waters surface and gets swooped up by the winds during a storm.

They say that when this stuff lands on the ground, it simply disappears. So not much research has really been done on this stuff. But there are a few strange theories. Some believe it to be web threads created by spiders to travel on like a magic carpet. Others think it may be exhaust from UFOs. Of course this is another one of those fantastic mysteries that my never be explained.

A Few of My Theories on Strange Rain

I believe that all the downpours of animals and such from the sky are due to water spouts, or water tornados. It seems quite logical to me that a tornado going across a body of water would pick up small animals that may be close to the surface. Then as the tornado travels along they simply drop in other areas where they’re discovered. Of course to anyone witnessing the event it would appear as though it was raining frogs. But one thing bothers me about this theory. There haven’t been any tornado reports during these occurrences.

Most of you know I live in West Texas, and seeing a large “dust devil” is not uncommon. A dust devil for those of you that don’t know is just a smaller version of a tornado that picks up a lot of dust and they usually move very quickly and disappear just as fast. But seeing these things pop up so often kind of leads me to my theory.

But dust devils are not very powerful, in fact you can stand right in the middle of one and hardly have your hair move. Much less these things being able to pick up wildlife. But some tornados have been reported to pick up certain objects, sometimes even as large as a automobile and drop it several miles away from where it was picked up. So this kind of makes sense. So how do I explain the, “no tornado reports” during the instances?

Well another theory of mine is that maybe water spouts or tornados are responsible, but they have a little help along the way. What if a bunch of frogs or fish were picked up by a water spout and these said frogs and fish were dropped on a passing plane. Then the plane passes along it’s way and the animals eventually fall of hundreds of miles away. This would definitely explain the “no tornado reports” situation.

Well, who knows really how these events occur. But these are just a couple of my theories on the subject. There’s a neat little article on Raining Frogs that kind of supports my theory.


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23 thoughts on “Raining Frogs and Other Strange Rain
  1. Along with Athanaeus who you mentioned Pliny the Elder in the 1st Century reported both raining Frogs and Fish .
    Its happened in the UK ” In the Norfolk case, the fish were probably carried along in the storm clouds and dumped when the rain fell.

    Met Office spokesman Andy Yeatman said it was quite common for cloud bursts to open and release a hail of fish or frogs. ”
    UK scientists think explanations like these can explain the 10 plagues of Egypt http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/869482.stm

    1. Cool link Stu. Yah, what you’ve explained is the most logical explanation for some of these occurrences. Nature is such a strange and unusual creature in itself. There’s so many aspects of it which we will probably never full understand.

      Thanks for sharing with us.

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