That Tuesday Clare made raisin cookies. The raisins were unusually good so I asked Clare where she’d gotten them. She responded, “from the rain” and then explained:
“One day it started raining raisins. Everyone in the village ran outdoors and stood with their heads held back and their mouths opened. As, at the time, I didn’t feel like eating raisins but didn’t want them to go to waste, I grabbed a bucket and placed it in the middle of the courtyard. In just a few minutes, it was full of raisins. Later, I placed the raisins on a baking tray and dried them in the oven before storing them in sterilized jars.”
Well, I’ve heard of objects falling from the skies, but raisins? However, things falling from the sky is really not all that unusual. Here are some examples of other unusable precipitations:
On July 25, 2001, blood-red rain began to fall on Kerala in India. Anyone wearing white who got stuck in the rain found themselves unexpectedly dressed in pink. This was especially bad for young men who would subsequently be accused of being gay. But the ladies from the Pink Saree Revolution (Gulabi Gang) were quite pleased and hung white fabric on the lines so it would turn pink for their sarees. The pink saree has now become an international symbol of resistance against injustice.
Some local authorities claimed Karala’s red colored rain came from algae whereas some physicists proposed that the phenomena had been caused by alien microorganisms that had fallen on the Earth thanks to a disintegrating comet.
Every spring in Yoro, Honduras, it rains fish. There’s no need for a fishing pole, just a good back that will permit you to bend to the ground to pick up the fallen fish. Known as Lluvia de Peces (Rain of Fish), there’s a yearly festival to celebrate this phenomenon.
The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclides Lembus (180-145 BC), wrote how it had rained frogs in the Balkans. In fact, it had rained so many frogs that they were everywhere. Even in the homes, in the soups, and in the beds.
Tornadic waterspouts are tornados that form over water. Their vortex sucks up surface water as well as the animals living in it. Then the updraft carries the animals away and, after the storm wears itself out, these animals fall to the ground like rain.
Honeybees have their own form of spring cleaning. On the first warm day after winter, the bees get together for a mass defecation cleansing flight. For hygienic reasons, bees don’t poop at home. During the winter they can keep their poop inside them for up to four months. But once the weather is warm, the worker bees leave the hive to defecate. Like yellow rain, bee poop splatters on car windows as well as other surfaces that you would prefer to be clean. But then again, no poop, no honey.
In 1974, millions of tiny spiders began falling from the sky over Albury, Australia. Not having wings, as the spiders fell, they released fine silk threads that permitted them to latch on to wind currents so they could safely travel. But by the time these little spiders hit the ground, they’d created a huge web. It was like a blanket that covered the land and appeared to be snow. It was not a unique happening and happens all the time. It’s a technique known as “ballooning” that permits spiders to become airborne.
In today’s weather forecast, rain is predicted. So, I’ll be staying indoors today.
Related:
The Man Who Fell to Earth, David Bowie movie + The Man Who Fell From The Sky is the stranger-than-fiction story behind the most extreme journey ever made by a human being movie +
Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Rankin (October 16, 1920 – July 6, 2009) was the first person to survive a fall from the top of a cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud + The man who fell to earth | Immigration and asylum +
Red rain in Kerala + The Story Behind the Pink Saree Revolution +
The lluvia de peces (lit. ‘rain of fish’) +
The ‘Raining Frog’ Phenomenon Is Actually Based In Science + Rain of animals +
Yellow rain + Do Bees Pee or Poop? How Honeybees Handle Waste + Yellow rain: but whose bees did it? + Mysterious Liquid That Rained Down On Las Vegas Has Been Identified +
How Does Spiders Raining Down in Australia Happen? + Raining Spiders In Australia: The Sky That Crawled With Webs + Spider Silk + Do Spiders Make Webs From Their Bum? + What does it mean if a spider shaking its bum? +
