Unusual Skyfalls

[Stormsfury]

Marksville, LA 1947 - Freshwater fish fell from the sky

Between 7 am and 8 am on October 23rd, 1947

Freshwater fish fell in great numbers on the town of Marksville, LA. The weather at the time was calm and somewhat foggy. The fish, largemouth bass, sunfish, hickory shad, and minnows, were "absolutely fresh and fit for human consumption". Some were frozen and some were merely cold.

The fish fell in an area approximately 1,000 feet long and 75 to 80 feet wide. Some of them struck pedestrians. There was no rain at the time, and the New Orleans weather bureau had no report of tornadoes in the vicinity. There were numerous dustdevils that had been observed the day before.

Source: (Science, 109:402, April 22, 1949)

More weather facts can be found at my website: (Southeastern Section - This event above not on the website)

http://www.stormsfury1.com under Severe/Unusual Facts

If this is interesting, let me know and I'll continue with another one tomorrow.

[Stormsfury]

Something that was described as sulphur rain fell on Mount Vernon, KY, on March 21st, 1898. Several other places in Rockcastle County also reported this occurrence. The substance was flammable and smelled of sulphur ...

(Source: Monthly Weather Review, 26:566,December 1898)

[Stormsfury]

A downpour of frogs (or toads) of all kinds and descriptions fell on Leicester, Mass. Paxton Ave was alive with them, and children gathered them up by the bucketful with their bare hands. A great many were found on roofs and in gutters, thereby tending to discredit the explanation that they had hopped into the streets from an overflowing pond.

(Source: The Worcester Telegram and Gazette January 6, 1959)

[Rob-TheStormChaser]

lol Mike...I used to read these as a kid in all the books! Seems like many happened in the late 1800s from what I can tell. Mustve been some bad storms back then!

[Stormsfury]

A group of railroad workers were caught in a hailstorm outside Salina, KS in early August 1882. They headed back to Salina, the hailstones becoming larger and more numerous as they approached town, until they reached a place where the hailstones were as deep as winter snow. There they found one piece of ice weighing approximately 80 pounds, which they carried back to town... By evening, after it had melted somewhat, the chunk of ice still measured 29 by 16 by 2 inches.

Source: (Scientific American, 47:119, August 19, 1882)

[Stormsfury]

Fire seemed to fall from the skies like rain for about 10 minutes on the night of October 18th, 1867, at Thames, Ditton, Surrey, England. In the morning - "waterbutts and puddles in the upper part of the village were thickly covered with a deposit of sulphur." (Symon's Monthly Meteorological Magazine, 2:130 December 1867)

[Stormsfury]

On November 11th, 1846, a luminous object estimated at around 4 ft. in diameter fell in Loweville, NY. It left behind, or became a heap of foul-smelling jelly.

(Source: Scientific American, 2:79, November 28th, 1846)

[breeze]

Hmmm...remains of a tossed-out alien t.v.dinner, maybe???

[Stormsfury]

July 2nd, 1843 - An Alligator falls from the sky during a thunderstorm in Charleston, SC on Anson Street.

[StormCrazyIowan]

My dad has told a story since I was little about Christmas day in Hardy, KY when he was 10 years old, a plane must have been carrying too much cargo, so they threw off boxes of toys and him and all the neighborhood kids saw them fall and had many toys for Christmas! Maybe there is a Santa after all!

[Amanzi]

That would make for a good santa movie Jacki!

[StormCrazyIowan]

Yep, sure would!

[Stormsfury]

Brought this topic back from the dead. Sorry for the long break between updates

On March 3rd, 1964, meteorologists J.B. Matthews and D.O. Staley watched an odd electrical display during a snowstorm in Tucson, Arizona (odd event in itself).

From the 80 foot observation tower on the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, they could see single, short flashes of light originating at or near the ground all across the city.

The flashes were less flickering and intense than normal bolts of lightning. There wasn't thunder nor static.

Matthews speculated that discrete amounts of electric charge were carried down with the unusually large and wet flakes.

Matthews stated, "Clearly, this leaves many unanswered questions.)

Source: Weather, 19:291-92, September 1964

[Stormsfury]

This doesn't exactly qualify as an unusual skyfalls, however, it's quite an event, nonetheless.

A freakish blast of heat swept over the towns of Figueira da Foz and Coimbra, Portugal, on July 6th, 1949. It lasted just two minutes, but a naval officer at Figueira da Foz reported that the temperature shot up from about 100ºF to 158ºF within that time. Many barnyard fowl were killed, and the Mondego River was reported to have dried up in several places.

(Vincent Gaddis, Mysterious Fires and Lights, p. 74)

[Stormsfury]

On a November afternoon in 1958 rain fell for 2½ hours onto a 10-foot square area of the home or Mrs. R. Babington in Alexandria, LA. The sky was quite clear at the time, and neither the local weather bureau nor the nearby England Air Force Base could offer any explanation of the phenomenon.

The Alexandria Daily Town Talk, November 11th, 1958

[Stormsfury]

A beach burst into flames at Kittery Point, Maine on September 1, 1905:

... guests at the Hotel Parkfield were startled by the appearance of flames rising from the beach and from the surface of the water, and event of so remarkable and unusual a character as to excite great curiousity and some alarm. The conflagration occurred between 7 and 8 o'clock in the evening, and lasted for upwards of 45 minutes. The flames were about one foot in height. They were accompanied by a loud and continuous crackling noise which could be distinctly heard one hundred yards away, while at the same time there was a very strong liberation of sulphurous acid fumes which penetrated the hotel, drove the proprietor and his staff from the office and filled the other rooms to such an extent as to cause great inconvenience to the guests. One guest of an investigating turn of mind secured some of the sand in his hand, but was obliged to drop it on account of the heat. When some of the sand was taken into the hotel and stirred in water, bubbles of gas were liberated and produced flame as they broke at the surface in contact with the air.

D.P. Penhallow examined the beach and concluded that a layer of buried seaweed had fermented, creating pockets of "carburetted and phosphuretted hydrogen" and other gases. His explanation is so plausible that one can wonder why blazing beaches are not a common seaside attraction.

Science, New Series 22:794-96, December 15, 1905)

[Stormsfury]

Talk about a windfall, or in this case an unusual skyfall.

Numerous silver coins fell in the Meshchera region in central Russia during a storm in 1940. (John Michell and Robert J.M. Rickard, Phenomena: A Book of Wonders, p. 19)

[Stormsfury]

An eight-inch globe of ball lightning - about as bright as a 10-watt bulb,and giving off no preceptible heat-emerged from the pilot's cabin and floated down the aisle of an airliner on a New York to Washington flight on March 19th, 1963, just after lightning struck the plane. A passenger, R.C. Jennison, was especially struck by its perfect symmetry and "almost solid appearance"

(Nature, 224:895, November 29, 1969)

[Stormsfury]

A 10 minute shower of toads at Jouy-en-Josas, near Versailles, France, in June 1833 was witnessed by M. Heard. They had bounced off his umbrella, hopped about on the pavement, and were as numerous as the raindrops. He saw them scattered for some 1,200 feet.

(Monthly Weather Review. 45:217-24, May 1917)

[Stormsfury]

Where the citizens of Rahway, NJ, saw "Fiery RAIN" fall to the ground on November 13th, 1833, they found "lumps of jelly". A woman milking a cow at West Point, NY, on that same day saw something land "with a SPLOSH" beside her. It was a round, flattened mass the size of a teacup and perfectly transparent. This had occurred at sunrise. At 10AM, she went out to show some people the jelly but found that it had disappeared. In its place a boy found some white particles the size of a pinhead, but they disintegrated into powder and disappeared when he tried to pick them up. (Letter from Alexander C. Twining to Prof. Denison Olmsted of Yale College)

These incidents were reported in connection with a meteor shower that appeared over the Eastern United States on November 13th. (The American Journal of Science and Arts, 1:363-411, January 1834)