by Pilar Abeijon

A resident of the Moncelos parish (province of Lugo), had the surprise of his life when he discovered that one of his properties was inundated with small fish and algae after a massive storm that had affected the area.

That Thursday afternoon, a torrential downpour had hit all of Lugo Province. Jaime Fernández, a Moncelos parishioner, concerned about the possible material damages the storm could have inflicted upon his properties, grabbed hold of a flashlight and decided to inspect the storm's impact on an esplanade not far from a greenhouse. His surprise at finding the bunches of small fish and a kind of algae scattered all over the premises is easily imaginable.

"Upon seeing the fish, my first thought was that someone had thrown their garbage onto his farm, since it's located by the roadside," Jaime explained. "But it later dawned on me that the there were algae like the kind you see in fish tanks right next to the fish..."

A few days after the curious event, some of the small fish and algae fallen from the skies remained visible over a two hundred square meter surface, even thought the vast majority of them had already fallen prey to birds and cats. Our initial impression, when Jaime's mother described the events, was that some fisherman without a permit had been caught in the act by the Guardia Civil

and had scattered the proof of the crime within the farm. But this hypothesis would collapse upon examining some of the fishes and ascertaining that they were jureles, a type of maritime fish quite common in the Galician estuaries. We were further able to learn that particular type of algae is not found in riverine environments and that the only fish to be found there were lowly trout.

Throughout history, as countless oral and written accounts can attest, rain has not been the only thing to fall from the sky: on many occasions, to the astonishment of eyewitnesses, small creatures like frogs, toads, spiders, mice, snails, scarabs, worms or even fish, as in this instance, have rained from above.

In Spain, regions such as Extremadura and Andalucía have often found their streets plagued by frogs and fish after powerful storms have gone through the area in May and late summer. The most spectacular one of these took place in 1944 at San Vicente de Alcántara (Cáceres).

One afternoon, a black cloud covered the sky and a mixture of rain and hail fell upon the community. The locals hurried to shelter themselves within their homes, and once the storm had ended, they could see that the ground was covered with thumbnail-sized toads. The town's children, amused by the event, played at who could catch the greatest number of batrachians..

In certain countries, this type of phenomena occurs with such regularity that local residents eagerly await the event to profit from it. This occurs in Yoro (Honduras), for example.

Here, when the rainy season starts, the locals anxiously wait for the chaparrón de peces (literally, "fish cloudburst") with nets, buckets and other containers at the ready for catching the hundreds of sardines that fall from the sky.

In the Argentinean town of Timbuos, there is a popular saying that whenever the north wind blows over the Iber Lagoon, a rainfall of frogs can be expected.

However, the most coherent explanation that can be formulated in the light of these unusual phenomena has to do with the formation of strong wind currents and whirlwinds due to the differences of temperature that exist between the various air masses. These currents would be capable of dragging an infinite number of small objects that they have found in their wake and carry them through the air, such as frogs from a pond or the smallest fish of a given river. Once the wind loses strength, the animals fall with the rain many kilometers away from their point of origin, causing the bewilderment of all those who witness the event.

The second hypothesis, formulated by researcher Charles Fort at the turn of the century, has little acceptance among most researchers since it involves "teleportation". Fort believed in a force capable of transporting objects from one place to another without having covered any distance at all. Given its effect, this force could cause any object to disappear and make it reappear elsewhere. On certain occasions, there has also been talk of an event similar to rains of animals, but one that is much more curious and harder to explain: rains of objects.

The oldest such event recorded appears in the biblical Book of Joshua (10:11), describing a battle between Amorrites and Israelites which was influenced by a rain of stones caused by Yahweh, leading the latter to victory.

Ancient chronicles and etchings allude to rains of other absurd objects. During the year 746, crosses rained from the sky in Sicily. Fruit rained from the sky throughout the Middle Ages; Devonshire and Wansworth (U.K), Napa (California) and Reading and Chester (Pennsylvania) are allegedly the sites of ice storms that assume the shape of large blocks capable of inflicting heavy damage, whether by crushing cattle in the field or smashing the roofs of houses. Even more incredible are the rainfalls of blood seen during the 19th century in Paris, Granada and Bristol, or the nauseating chunks of meat that fell over Kentucky in 1876. The frightened residents of these communities attributed the unusual phenomena to divine retribution for mankind's moral decadence.

Despite the fact that this type of unusual phenomena appear to be legends or mere exaggerations by the gullible, the fact of the matter is that there are accounts that can be considered reliable and cases involving falls of small animals, such as the fish in Lugo, can be rationally explained. They remain curious events, nonetheless...