Raining fish

Raining animals is a rare meteorological phenomenon in which flightless animals fall from the sky. Such occurrences have been reported in many countries throughout history. One hypothesis is that tornadic waterspouts sometimes pick up creatures such as fish or frogs, and carry them for up to several miles. However, this aspect of the phenomenon has never been witnessed by scientists.

Rain of flightless animals and things has been reported throughout history. In the first century AD, Roman naturalist Pliny The Elder documented storms of frogs and fish. In 1794, French soldiers witnessed toads fall from the sky during heavy rain at Lalain, near the French city of Lille. Rural inhabitants in Yoro, Honduras, claim 'fish rain' happens there every summer, a phenomenon they call Lluvia de Peces.

French physicist André-Marie Ampère (1775 – 1836) was among the first scientists to take seriously accounts of raining animals. Addressing the Society of Natural Sciences, Ampère suggested that at times frogs and toads roam the countryside in large numbers, and that violent winds could pick them up and carry them great distances.

Sometimes the animals survive the fall, suggesting the animals are dropped shortly after extraction. Several witnesses of raining frogs describe the animals as startled but healthy, and exhibiting relatively normal behavior shortly after the event. In some incidents, the animals are frozen to death or even completely encased in ice. There are examples where the product of the rain is not intact animals, but shredded body parts. Some cases occur just after storms having strong winds, especially during tornadoes. However, there have been many unconfirmed cases in which rainfalls of animals have occurred in fair weather and in the absence of strong winds or waterspouts.

Given that waterspouts do not actually lift anything (the water droplets visible in the column are merely condensation), it is implausible to suggest they are capable of lifting fish from below the surface of the water and high into the sky.

A better accepted scientific explanation involves tornadic waterspouts: a tornado that forms over land and travels over the water. Under this hypothesis, a tornadic waterspout transports animals to relatively high altitudes, carrying them over large distances. This hypothesis appears supported by the type of animals in these rains: small and light, usually aquatic, and by the suggestion that the rain of animals is often preceded by a storm. However, the theory does not account for how all the animals involved in each individual incident would be from only one species, and not a group of similarly-sized animals from a single area.

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Wikipedia