Falling fish and other heavenly missiles
Falling ice in Kew and California, blue snow in St Petersburg, rains of fish in Texas... and a flying sheep
A 44lb (20kg) ice block fell from the sky and hit North Road, near Kew Gardens station in southwest London, on 7 February. Street cleaner Serhiy Mysehkov was working feet away, on the opposite side of the road. Amir Khan, 39, who had stopped near the incident in his car, managed to capture the dramatic moment on his car’s security camera at 9.08am. “It made such a loud noise like a meteorite crashing down,” he said. “The street cleaner was so confused and scared.” The ice came down underneath a busy flight path to Heathrow Airport, but a Civil Aviation Authority spokesman said: “Although ice does very occasionally fall from aircraft, it can also be the result of meteorological phenomena. We receive around 30 reported ice falls every year, although we are not certain how many of these incidents are the result of ice falling from an aircraft.” metro. co.uk, 9 Feb; D.Telegraph, D.Mail, 10 Feb 2018.
Claudell Curry, 82, his wife were enjoying a quiet evening at home in San Bernardino, California, on 10 December 2017 when a horrible crashing sound came from their bedroom. They found chunks of clear ice lying and debris from their ceiling littering the room. It probably would have been more traumatic had the ice been blue, from the chemicals added to plane lavatories to reduce odour and break down the waste. Since the San Bernardino ice was clear as in other unexplained megacryometeor cases, its origin isn’t so easy to identify. A similar case happened just a month earlier only a few dozen miles away when another deadly chunk of ice fell through a home in Chino, California. The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) wasn’t able to identify a source for either case, as there were no commercial flights in the area on either date. The nearby March Air Reserve Base, Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, and Camp Pendleton also denied responsibility.
mysteriousuniverse.org, 15 Dec 2017.
In 2005, meteorologists collected reports of 40 cases of megacryometeor falls around the world since 1999. They suggested that these ice bombs occur in the upper atmosphere by a process analogous to hail formation inside thunderstorms, and that global warming is causing the lower part of the atmosphere – the troposphere, where we live – to expand and rise. This means that the tropopause, the so-called roof of the troposphere, is forced to a greater height, where it cools more than normal. Thus the new, steeper temperature difference between warm and cold air in the upper atmosphere generates turbulent up-anddown winds that repeat the hailformation process, but without a thunderstorm.
Documented references to ice falls go back two centuries, long before powered flight; for example, 2kg (4.4lb) of ice in Cordoba, Spain, in 1829, and 1kg (2.2lb) of ice in New Hampshire in 1851. Probably the best documented was a 2kg chunk with 51 layers of ice that nearly brained meteorologist RF Griffiths in Manchester on 2 April 1973 [ FT13:9]. For other megacryometeor reports, see
FT82:43, 132:6, 133:66, 140:66, 214:25, 321:8.
On 9 January, Dawn Scarpulla heard a loud noise and found yellow ice on her roof. It broke apart and cracked her ceiling. “When we put the pieces together it was like a five- to sixfoot (1.5-1.8m) piece of ice, so it was big,” she said. She stashed a sample in her garage freezer for analysis. As her house is under the flight path to O’Hare International Airport, she thought the ice had come from a plane – although the FAA said this was unlikely. CBS Chicago, 9 Jan 2018.
On 20 January, a 10-12kg (2226lb) chunk of ice fell on Fazilpur Badli village in the northern Indian state of Haryana, causing a “big thud”. Senior Gurgaon officialVivek Kalia said a sample had been sent for analysis, but he and his colleagues had a strong suspicion that it was frozen airline excrement. “Some villagers thought it was an extraterrestrial object,” he said. “Others thought it was some celestial rock and I’ve heard that they took samples home.” A senior official of the Indian Meteorological Department, who examined a small sample, said the projectile was “definitely not a meteorological phenomenon”.
In January 2016, a woman in central Madhya Pradesh state suffered a severe shoulder injury when she was hit by a footballsized chunk of ice that crashed into the roof of her house. This was also thought to be frozen airline waste. BBC News, 22 Jan 2018.
Blue snow covered the ground in St Petersburg, Russia, in midDecember. Residents worried that it could have been due to toxic chemicals, possibly a result of the demolition of the city’s chemical-pharmaceutical research institute. Experts said the colours could have been caused by cobalt, a metallic element, or methylene blue, a substance used in some medical treatments. Samples were taken for analysis. In February 2015, blue snow fell in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, some 1,500 miles (2,400km) to the east of St Petersburg, and was found to be due to food colouring used in Easter eggs. The dye had got into the ventilation system of a factory and been spread all over the area. dailymail.co.uk, 27 Dec 2017.
Dana and Ryan Metz’s house in Fulshear, Texas, was bombarded with fish that rained
down at about 3.20pm during an ice storm on 16 January. The family collected about 15 fish, some from their swimming pool. In all, about 10 neighbours in the Cross Creek Ranch subdivision near Fulshear discovered fallen fish, across an area roughly three quarters of a mile by half a mile (1,200m x 800m). Several residents went out photographing and filming the fish, and updating their Facebook pages. One told FT correspondent Paul Cropper that she had found 100 fish in her yard. At least 130 fish fell – possibly a lot more. They were identified by an ichthyologist as threadfin shad, Dorosona petenense. One was photographed on a roof and another on a windowsill; one witness actually saw three fish raining down. There was a strong north wind blowing during the storm, and the Metzes and their neighbours speculated that the fish were scooped up from two small ponds to the north of their homes; but Paul Cropper contacted Dan Reilly, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Houston, who commented: “Radar shows no thunderstorms, really just stratiform precipitation (mostly sleet/ice pellets). Waterspouts, tornadoes would not make sense at all from the meteorology of the day, and no hint of any rotation or anything odd on radar. It remains a mystery as far as I’m concerned”. A marine biologist suggested the fish could have been disgorged by birds such as a herons or cormorants, but none of the fish appeared even partially digested, and the large area of piscine precipitation argued against this explanation.
Another witness contacted Paul to report further dead fish in her back yard and porch on 14-15 February. These were of a different species, larger in size and showed signs of damage. Paul concluded that, in this case at least, birds such as migratory pelicans (seen at a lake in the area), may well have been responsible. click2houston.com, 17 Jan; thefortean.com/2018/02/12/ fulshear, thefortean.com/2018/ 02/22/more-fish-fall-at-fulshear.
A large flounder landed on a Russell Hogg’s head as he relaxed in Parnell Baths, a spa pool in Auckland, New Zealand, on 13 January. Mr Hogg, originally from Portsmouth in England, is director of fire protection company the Fire Guys. Feeling a thwack on the side of his head, he thought someone had done an unruly belly flop or that something had been thrown at him. Then he saw a black shape sink to the bottom of the pool and pulled out a large flounder weighing a couple of kilos. It flapped around a bit before expiring. Given the power with which it hit him, it must have been travelling at a very high speed. The only explanation he could muster was that it had been dropped by a large, high-flying bird. After taking a few pictures he threw it over the wall for the seagulls to eat. New Zealand Herald, 13 Jan 2018.
James Hill, 26, an engineer resident in Whitstable, Kent, was in the kitchen at lunchtime on 15 February, making a cup of tea, when his father Colin came in to announce that there was a 2ft (60cm) -long small-spotted catshark lying dead on the lawn. The pair believe it was picked up by an over-ambitious cormorant or herring gull that dropped it in mid-flight. “It was in pretty good condition, but had been dead for a couple of days,” said James. (How could he tell? Some locals thought the story a bit fishy.) Small-spotted catsharks live in shallow waters off Britain and Norway, in the Mediterranean and off the coast of East Africa. They have slender bodies, blunt heads and sandpaper-like skin. kentonline.co.uk, Metro, Sun, 19 Feb 2018.
A driver in central Washington State was hit by a flying sheep on 31 October 2017. He was near the town of Chelan when he saw a herd of bighorn sheep on the hillside above the road. One of the animals, a ewe, jumped and smashed the car’s windshield. The driver was not hurt and managed to pull his car over. The sheep died. [AP] 31 Oct 2017.