Raining Animals

Frogs, fish, and toads pattering from the sky like rain sound like a story from the Biblical plagues of Egypt, but they are in fact a known, if somewhat mysterious, weather phenomenon that occurs all across the globe. From antiquity to the present day, rains of animals are reported here and there during storms. The most common animals are fish and frogs, which are usually intact and often alive and in good health (although, naturally, the fish soon die if they land out of water).

Sometimes, the rain is of badly mangled pieces of animals instead -- sometimes to the point where the remains are unidentifiable -- or the beasts are dead, frozen, and coated in ice. At other times, rains of animals from a fair sky are reported, although these accounts tend to be from the past, before there was any reliable way to verify the information. Although animals falling from a rainstorm seems like a peculiar event, the fact that that animals are almost always small and almost always aquatic (fish or frogs, for the most part) leads to a plausible explanation for the event, even if it has not yet been proven by direct observation.

Small waterspouts - the probably source of animal rains

Since most, if not all, reliable accounts of animal rains place the event in a rainstorm, the most likely explanation for the bizarre happening is that these storms produce small, weak waterspouts over water far more frequently than is generally believed. These waterspouts are likely to be small and brief, so they are not observed or picked up on radar. They may last long enough, however, to suck up groups of frogs or schools of fish from ponds, lakes, and rivers.

The updrafts in the storm aren't strong enough to support a larger waterspout or tornado, however, and soon die out. When this happens, the lofted animals are dumped unceremoniously on whatever point the storm is passing over. If the storm is still over water, the animal rain goes unnoticed, but if it is over inhabited land, the people there will witness a rain of animals. Since the frogs in such a rain are usually unhurt (though they act disoriented for a short time), they are unlikely to have spent more than a few minutes in the clouds.

Frozen animals falling from a cloud were probably picked up by a much stronger waterspout and carried to a greater height by powerful updrafts. The updrafts lasted long enough for the animals to freeze solid, and eventually, as the updrafts weaken, they become too weak to hold up the weight of the frogs or fish. The animals probably came from much farther away, however, since they had time to freeze, and, frequently, gain a coating of ice.

One mysterious part of the animal rain phenomenon, however, is why the animals are usually all of one kind. Most reports speak of fish or frogs, for example, not both. If a waterspout is indeed responsible, then it should vacuum up every kind of animal that it is able to lift from the water it passes over. Frogs, fish, toads, salamanders, turtles -- all should fall together, combined with water plants and other such debris. Why the rains are uniform is unclear, but the phenomenon is well documented enough to be in little doubt.