Fish Fall From The Sky In East Texas (Is This The Reason?)

Fish were falling from the sky in one East Texas town according to a report at KXXV.com.

Several residents in Texarkana posted pictures and videos to social media Wednesday after finding fish scattered in some unlikely places including their lawns and sidewalks.

“2021 is pulling out all the tricks… including raining fish in Texarkana today,” said the City of Texarkana. “And no, this isn’t a joke.”

According to officials with The Library of Congress, many scientists believe tornadic waterspouts may be responsible for frog and fish rainfalls.

According to Complete Weather Resource (1997), “a tornadic waterspout is merely a tornado that forms over land and travels over the water.” An especially strong kind of waterspout, they are not as strong as land based tornadoes, which can reach up to 310 miles per hour. But tornadic waterspouts can reach 100 miles per hour, which can still be quite destructive.

A popular misconception is that waterspouts “rise out of the sea.” In reality, they begin in the air and descend toward the water’s surface. The first visible sign of a tornadic waterspout is usually a dark spot on the water’s surface, which is caused by a spinning column of low-pressure air stirring up the water from overhead. As the spinning column of air, or vortex, gains momentum, the surrounding water is pulled into a spiral pattern of light and dark bands.

Professor Ernest Agee from Purdue University says, “I’ve seen small ponds literally emptied of their water by a passing tornado. So, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for frogs (or other living things) to ‘rain’ from the skies” (Chandler, 2004). Most scientists agree that salt, stones, fish, or frogs can be pulled into a waterspout’s swirling updrafts and deposited once the waterspout hits land and loses its energy.

On October 23, 1947, A.D. Bajkov, a biologist with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife, was eating breakfast at a restaurant in Marksville, Louisiana when the waitress told him and his wife that fish were falling from the sky. “There were spots on Main Street, in the vicinity of the bank (a half block from the restaurant) averaging one fish per square yard. Automobiles and trucks were running over them. Fish also fell on the roofs of houses…I personally collected from Main Street and several yards on Monroe Street, a large jar of perfect specimens and preserved them in Formalin, in order to distribute them among various museums.”

On June 7, 2005, thousands of frogs rained on Odzaci, a small town in northwestern Serbia. Climatologist Slavisa Ignjatovic described the phenomenon as “not very unusual” because the strong winds that accompanied the storm could have easily picked up the frogs.

Weather causes strange situations and watching animals fall from the sky has to be one of the most bizarre.

Have you experienced this phenomenon? Did you see the incident in Texarkana?

If so, please share in the comment section.