Fish Float, Not Fly. Why are They Falling from the Sky?!

reply to post by Praetorius

Long live fortean events, and may they never be explained as such would make the world a more-boring place!

Well I'd like some explained! Of course, it's also worth keeping a few going because they're like magic for grown-ups who sometimes miss the magical possibilities available to childhood imaginations.

reply to post by karen61057

The only fish that float are the dead ones. The live ones swim.

Thank you for that. 'Swim' just didn't alliterate too well

reply to post by Wertdagf

Its not that the tornadoes are selective, the human mind is.

Not to say that your line of questioning is rediculous, but what are you gonna remember.. falling twigs... or fish.

No doubt some falls were staged, many people have staged many paranormal events. Humans in general are big fat liars who just want attention.

Howdy Wertdagf, I pointed out the same thing in the OP about people overlooking more mundane things like twigs for the apple fall in England. Still, in the fish fall account, I set out to assure myself that the best explanation was the correct one for unusual falls and it didn't work out that way. One of the reasons for posting about this particular incident was to invite ATSers to check out the data and perhaps show that the weather was responsible. It's also an open invitation to ATSers to look at other incidents and nail them down with a prosaic explanation.

reply to post by Iamschist
Cheers Schist, QE could be accountable for these anomalous falls. Who knows? Unfortunately, QE is currently limited to rather small particles so we'd have to wait a while before we extend the idea to unidentified flying apples.

My Grandma used to show us some old pictures she took after it "rained frogs", as she put it.
It would have been up-state New York, some time in the late '30s, early '40s.
There were, indeed, what appeared to be hundreds of dead frogs all over the place, probably 3-5 inches long. On the ground, car, roof of the house, etc.
There must have been about a dozen snapshots, with various pre-school versions of aunts and uncles standing around in front of the car or whatever, with frogs all around them.

Gram would say the "frog rain" lasted almost ten minutes, and she knew folks who had been actually hit by falling frogs (she said they left a bruise. I bet they would!). She always said "Thank God they weren't bullfrogs!".

No idea what ever became of those pics.

Waterspouts usually form without storms, the most common form is NOT tornadic

Waterspouts that are not associated with a rotating updraft of a supercell thunderstorm are known as "non-tornadic" or "fair-weather waterspouts", and are by far the most common type. Fair-weather waterspouts occur in coastal waters and are associated with dark, flat-bottomed, developing convective cumulus towers. Waterspouts of this type rapidly develop and dissipate, having life cycles shorter than 20 minutes.[6]

When close to shorelines, waterspouts can devastate nearby coral reefs and marine organisms close to the surface

A winter waterspout, also known as a snow devil, an icespout, an ice devil, a snonado, or a snowspout, is an extremely rare instance of a waterspout forming under the base of a snow squall.[13][14] The term "winter waterspout" is used to differentiate between the common warm season waterspout and this rare winter season event. Very little is known about this phenomenon and only six known pictures of this event exist to date, four of which were taken in Ontario, Canada.

en.wikipedia.org...

I am surprised that there are still people who deny this ever occurs...but then again, there are people who still believe the Earth is flat, so I probably shouldn't be surprised. These types of occurrences have been documented for centuries, as the thread writer notes. I do not feel that these events are all that strange, although they are rare, because there are natural phenomena to explain them. As noted, all of the cases of water-dwelling creatures falling from the sky seem to occur near bodies of water where the creatures in question dwell.

I would not be concerned over events like these unless the animals coming down were found nowhere in the immediate vicinity. Say, if it were raining kangaroos in Montana. The most likely explanation is that these creatures are picked up by extremely heavy wind gusts, or waterspouts or tornadoes, which either carry them a short distance, or launch them an extended distance, where they seem to materialize from the sky. I am relatively certain that these natural forces, being somewhat random in nature, would statistically not be able to carry or send these creatures very far from the point where they originated.

However, what I am speaking of is only a general explanation, and although I think it would suffice for most of these occurrences, I would be willing to bet that there are exceptions. Such as, like I mentioned, creatures that do not originate in the immediate vicinity of where they end up. If, in these scenarios, tornadoes or similar natural phenomena were witnessed, that is probably the explanation...This is because the tornado would have to have covered a fair expanse of ground to move the creatures such a distance, therefore the tornado would be less likely to go unnoticed.

But for events where these criteria are not met, all I can say is that they would have to be handled on an individual basis. But I am fairly confident that very few, if any, cases exist where a natural explanation does not suffice. I also believe that some type of energy vortex that has yet to be documented is not out of the realm of possibility, and something of this nature could contribute to these incidents. If these forces do exist however, they must be relatively rare, otherwise there is a high likelihood that they would have been documented already.

reply to post by RealSpoke
Yeah, I'd looked at that too. Firstly, fair-weather waterspouts are coastal phenomena and Lajamanu is somewhat central to Australia's Northern Territory. Secondly, the nearest body of water we could describe as large is some 60 miles away.

When waterspouts have occurred inland, they've been generated by tornado conditions. Rankin County Mississippi had a beauty just last month.

I'd like to see the climate data for the Upper Victoria River NT station (100k distant) and the website's not helping.

reply to post by DocHolidaze


The scuba diver story is an urban myth.It never happened and in fact could not.The opening through which water is taken in by a water bomber is much too small for a human.Fish or other water creatures perhaps,but not a human.I know this because I once worked for the forestry service and have been around these water bombers and seen how they operate.Makes for a good story,but thats all it is.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Robert Anton Wilson touches on this quite a bit from every angle. Scientific, psychological, physicics, metaphysical etc. etc. & points to the Quantum explaination because this is the latest we have to define this "Magick".
RAW quotes stories from Fort about fish but really gets wounded up with blocks of ice, hail of stones repeatedly falling on the same place years apart like a ritual. RAW writes like George Carlin questioning the scientific community's "experts" About how these things happen and they just sound like idiots reaching for scientific straws and then run like rabbits from anything Quantum.
Take a look sometime at "The New Inquisition" it's both deep and hilarious:
www.rawilson.com...

"Cosmic Trigger" hosts a lot of Fortian anomalies as well. Also you can get "The Book of the Damned" by Fort on Amazon Kindle for free all 303 pages.

Nature's teleportation.

reply to post by MDDoxs


Actually a Waterspout can reach upto 10 meters below the surface (forming a sort of reverse whirlpool), which creates a space between the water being extracted and the water rushing into the vacume (like when a sink is draining out).

The suction at the base is powerful enough also to pull schools of fish from quite a distance. Think about dropping an empty container into a small pond full of tadpoles. As the water rushes in, so do the Tadpoles because they cannot fight the sudden massive flow.

Once in the sky, fish can be carried by the Tornado, remaining aloft through wind currents and pressure untill the waterspout hits land and dissipates. Then the fish simply fall back to earth, usually frozen or close to it. In some instances, they can remain in the air carried "or rather thrown", by the turbulance created by the Tornado and continue on the path it was taking untill they lose altitude and fall on some unlucky person out for a walk..lol

Treust me, these things have the ability to pick up large objects and carry them for a long distance. I have seen emergency workers pelted by fist sized rocks and very heavy tree limbs, thrown down by Rotating Virtical Smoke Columns, during a wildfire. Those things work under the same principle of a Tornado or waterspout

As far as I know, no one has ever seen anything go up a waterspout and nothing I can imagine would drop the same type of fish on two consecutive evenings. The point is the sheer resistance to explanation and why the insistence of some people to grasp at the straws of "Natural Occurance". I love Charles Fort, his wit and criticisms are stellar.

It is a very intriguing phenomenon and good thread OP.

My first thought was how long can a fish survive out of water, but a quick search showed that it was a suprisingly long time (in some species)! I never considered that a fish can stay out of water for so long!!

reply to post by Kandinsky


I know people want pics, but I was 5 when this happened. I was out on a ride with my grandfather in his convertible MG. Out of nowhere a catfish fell from the sky into my grandfathers lap. He almost drove off the
road! We pulled over and he picked it up and threw it. We looked at eachother in stark amazement and started laughing and then got out to go have a look because it happened so fast we still weren't 100% sure what it was.

The thing was still flopping around on the side of the road! We brought it home to show my grandma and she thought it was all a big joke and that my grandfather and I had collaberated. (the people in my family are the most insane pranksters at times--on both sides. So I got a double dose of the prankster gene and became addicted to the manic laughter it brought me as I grew older--but once I realized I could actually and in a few cases probably did hurt people I cooled off when I got to be about 22 or so.. If you've got it you know what I mean!!!) After much deliberation we concluded it must have been dropped by an eagle or large hawk or something. I mean, WTF!?

reply to post by goldspirit
I'm glad you *got* the thread idea

I haven't ruled out conventional explanations and have tried to point out how they don't seem to fit too well in this case...and others too. As you point out, Fort collected lots of these odd incidents and not all of them make a lot of sense.

reply to post by maskedkhan
That's a good point and tough to investigate. In this case and plenty others, somebody always says that some were still alive and it adds depth to the *mystery.* In Lajamanu, the only image we have shows definitely dead-looking fish (belly up). However, if we know how long it takes for a 'spangled perch' to suffocate out of water maybe we could frame a time-period from removal from habitat to plopping down on land? From there, we could even gain a reference for distance.

reply to post by bangoli
Hiya Bangoli, that's a very, very cool story and could have been caused by a pelican being struck by ball lightning and then gagging on its catfish supper. Or not! It sounds like a great memory to have though. I've got one that isn't as good but involves two people in a car and flying weirdness like your catfish...

Here in England, I was out with a friend having lunch in the countryside on one of the few hot weekends we've had this year. I think it was April 1st which makes it sound like I'm making this up. I was driving, she was in the passenger seat. As we drove past a river bed and sparse woods, a bloody snowball came from out-of-nowhere, from the left and smashed against the wing mirror on her side. Sounds stupid right? Well I stopped the car round the corner and got out to look. There it was - big wet splash mark down the side of the car. Turned the car round and there on the road was a puddle. Not a soul in sight, no laughing kids or anything.

The only explanation I could come up with was that some kid had made a home-made ice lolly, sucked out the juice and thrown the ice at us.

whilst i'd love to subscribe to the digital computer simulation or multiple dimension theories I suspect the real answer is more mundane;

reply to post by digitalf
Yeah, it's *probably* mundane in origin although no less extraordinary in its effects on people seeing fish fall from the sky. However, in the OP, the wind speed was breezy and the most recent storm in the territory was two days earlier than the first fall of fish and several hundred miles away. None of which rules out the mundane or parsimonious!

What it does is fall short of the circumstances described by the meteorologist in the video you linked. Inland, no storms, no local large bodies of water and two falls on separate days.

no really...

just a thought here. Mostly probably from a flying vehicle that's amphibious. Doesn't hafta be ET. Like a sea plane scooping up fish then they all drop off after nasty turbulence of sorts. Most likely for me.

But then hows about if they're freshwater fish? From a river? A sea plane can't come from there. Fish catapults anyone?

Then again someone coul've just blew up a river. They might have wanted a bigger water basin for their new dam. So this may have sent the fish flying miles away

reply to post by headb
Whoah there. Nobody's talking ET.

The fish were described as spangled perch and they don't look like the ones in the photo so maybe they weren't? Unfortunately for me, fish is what I eat and beyond that I wouldn't know one from another. If we could really ID the fish in that bucket, it might help to explain what they were doing dropping into a middle of nowhere town of population 600.

Dynamite fishing could be an answer if they were prepared to explode more $$$ in explosives than the value of the fish they could get. Also, don't forget the place is small and miles from anywhere...small markets for trade.

reply to post by Kandinsky


The fish in the bucket look like bass.

Am I too old for a tennis racket and crab apples? I did the eggs, too, but now I feel totally deprived of the absolute confusical nature of falling crab apples. Yeah, I made "confusical" up, but it's a damn handy word. Excellent and brainy thread, btw.

One of my absolute favorite movies of all time is Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson. A loooong movie. An odd movie. And the only movie I ever saw so many folk walk out of. I sat through it twice, and a good handful of folk walked out of it both times.

Sometimes I think it's the combination of mystery and paradox that keeps our will to live alive. There is, of course, the possibility that our most profound questions will be answered in an "afterlife,"...but I wanna know NOW, in this life, dadgummit!

Lot of good speculation and discussion here. Could the answer be: All of the Above??