At least four locations in town reported a free-fall of fish either during or in the aftermath of two storms that blew through here Wednesday afternoon.
Among the places that pelted by fish were Discount Wheel & Tire and Tiger Stadium, both on Summerhill Road on the Texas side of town.
Arkansas-side resident Melissa Curry was the first to call the Gazette to report the strange occurrence. She and her husband were leaving their home Wednesday afternoon when they discovered as many as two dozen small fish scattered around the back yard and side yard of their Victorian home.
"There were every bit of 20 fish out here.," Curry said. "we were flabbergasted. "
Tim Brigham, manager of Discount Wheel and Tire at 3223 Summerhill Road, said he saw some fish falling during a thunderstorm that popped up Wednesday afternoon.
"It was hailing and looked like there was about to be a tornado," he said. "And there were fish falling."
Brigham estimated there were between 25 and 30 fish and some were several inches long. There were at least as many on a lot to the north of his property.
"My grandpa had told me about stuff like this happening sometimes," he said. "A storm will go over a creek or river and pick up fish."
After the storm, cleared, around dusk, Brigham had an employee pick those in front of his building up and pile them behind the business so customers wouldn't accidentally step on them in his parking lot.
A reporter witnessed at least 15 to 20 shiny dead fish in the pile, some 6 to 7 inches long and with a girth of a couple inches or more. When he arrived and opened his car door, maybe an hour after the fact, the air smelled like fish, like the mild scent that hangs outside a fish market or at a fishing dock along a lake.
Simply put, the air smelled fishy.
All of the fish fhad their heads busted open, Brigham said.
Brigham believes the fish, which he called shad, must have been dropped from from pretty high up.
"They were bouncing off the concrete," he said.
Across the street at McClarty Ford, 3232 Summerhill, an employee told a reporter that the silver fish were all over the parking lot and he actually saw some of them falling from the sky during the storm.
A Gazette reporter on the scene later counted several dozen on one small section of the massive parking lot.
South down Summerhill Road about 1.5 miles from these two businesses, a fish fell on Tiger Stadium at Grim Park, where the Texas High Boys Soccer Team was practicing. Players were disbursed around 4 p.m. because rain was falling and a storm was approaching. Near the sidelines, a player kicked up a fish he found lying there," said Jackson Haltom, a team member.
"We weren't looking for fish," he said, "we were leaving, so there are probably more out there."
While three of the fall zones were on Summerhill Road, the first report of flying fish — or maybe crashing fish would be more accurate — came from a residential area in the 1800 block of Country Avenue, 2.2 miles to the east on the Arkansas side of town. The drop there seems to have happened earlier in the afternoon.
When this reporter arrived at the address, a dozen or more of the fish were on the ground. Curry said some of them had already been removed because she was afraid her grandchildren would try to eat them.
Still, this reporter saw at least 12 or 15 at the site.
Curry said she believed there might be a few on the roof but she couldn't be for sure because it was difficult to see up there.
"We had no idea where they came from," Curry said. "Somebody could be playing a prank but I've also heard about things like fish or frogs falling from the sky when it rains."I've heard about it but never seen it."
A rain of animals have been reported throughout history. One hypothesis is that tornadic waterspouts can pick up creatures such as fish and carry them for a distance. However, this phenomenon has never been witnessed by scientists. Another likely explanation is there is no falling and the animals are driven by winds.
Gary Chatelian, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Shreveport, Louisiana, said it is uncommon for fish to fall out of the sky but that is does happen.
Fish can be picked up in a water spot or tornadic winds, he said.
"They are picked up with the wind and come down like any debris does. They could have been picked up somewhere like Lake Texoma. They could have come from anywhere. And whatever goes up, must come down," he said.
The fish in Curry's yard were about the size of goldfish and were silver. At the two businesses, they were bigger.
Curry said she knew the fish were not at her house Tuesday because her grandchildren spent much of the day outside.
" They were jumping on the trampoline and we were outside most of the day," she said.
"We just thought it was really weird," she said.
None of the neighbors reported fish in their yards, Curry said.
After finding the fish, her husband put on gloves and picked up some of the fish that were in the children's play area of the back yard. One fish was on the trampoline.
Curry and her husband have lived in the house a number of years and like many old houses, there have been strange noises and occurrences before. But never fish found in the yard.
"I'm open minded," the woman said. " Anything can happen."
Gotta love 'synchronicity'! I was just writing last night about a fall of baby toads that occurred when I was a child. Finally trying to write a book about weird and wonderful West Tennessee.
See Fort's Super Sargasso Sea. In particular, imagine if a supposed waterspout AGAIN next week, drops fish over the exact same area. This has happened often. See his Book of the Damned. Free at: [Link]
Now Fort was the ultimate SOTType.
bentpenny Yep. He also talks about two teams of primatologists in Africa finding a common, completely new species of baboon or such which had never been around before.
the data:La Science Pour Tous, 6-191:Feb. 16, 1861. An earthquake at Singapore. Then came an extraordinary downpour of rain—or as much water as any good-sized lake would consist of. For three days this rain or this fall of water came down in torrents. In pools on the ground, formed by this deluge, great numbers of fishes were found. The writer says that he had, himself, seen nothing but water fall from the sky. Whether I'm emphasizing what a deluge it was or not, he says that so terrific had been the downpour that he had not been able to see three steps away from him. The natives said that the fishes had fallen from the sky. Three days later the pools dried up and many dead fishes were found, but, in the first place—though that's an expression for which we have an instinctive dislike—the fishes had been active and uninjured. Then follows material for another of our little studies in the phenomena of disregard. A psycho-tropism here is mechanically to take pen in hand and mechanically write that fishes found on the ground after a heavy rainfall came from overflowing streams. The writer of the account says that some of the fishes had been found in his courtyard, which was surrounded by high walls—paying no attention to this, a correspondent (La Science Pour Tous, 6-317) explains that in the heavy rain a body of water had probably overflowed, carrying fishes with it. We are told by the first writer that these fishes of Singapore were of a species that was very abundant near Singapore. So I think, myself, that a whole lakeful of them had been shaken down from the Super-Sargasso Sea, under the circumstances we have thought of. However, if appearance of strange fishes after an earthquake be more pleasing in the sight, or to the nostrils, of the New Dominant, we faithfully and piously supply that incense—An account of the occurrence at Singapore was read by M. de Castelnau, before the French Academy. M. de Castelnau recalled that, upon a former occasion, he had submitted to the Academy the circumstance that fishes of a new species had appeared at the Cape of Good Hope, after an earthquake.
It seems proper, and it will give luster to the new orthodoxy, now to have an instance in which, not merely quake and fall of rocks or meteorites, or quake and either eclipse or luminous appearances in the sky have occurred, but in which are combined all the phenomena, one or more of which, when accompanying earthquake, indicate, in our acceptance, the proximity of another world. This time a longer duration is indicated than in other instances.In the Canadian Institute Proceedings, 2-7-198, there is an account, by the Deputy Commissioner at Dhurmsalla, of the extraordinary Dhurmsalla meteorite—coated with ice. But the combination of events related by him is still more extraordinary:That within a few months of the fall of this meteorite there had been a fall of live fishes at Benares, a shower of red substance at Furruckabad, a dark spot observed on the disk of the sun, an earthquake, "an unnatural darkness of some duration," and a luminous appearance in the sky that looked like an aurora borealis—But there's more to this climax:We are introduced to a new order of phenomena: Visitors.
The Deputy Commissioner writes that, in the evening, after the fall of the Dhurmsalla meteorite, or mass of stone covered with ice, he saw lights. Some of them were not very high. They appeared and went out and reappeared. I have read many accounts of the Dhurmsalla meteorite—July 28, 1860—but never in any other of them a mention of this new correlate—something as out of place in the nineteenth century as would have been an aeroplane—the invention of which would not, in our acceptance, have been permitted, in the nineteenth century, though adumbrations to it were permitted. This writer says that the lights moved like fire balloons, but:
"I am sure that they were neither fire balloons, lanterns, nor bonfires, or any other thing of that sort, but bona fide lights in the heavens.
"It's a subject for which we shall have to have a separate expression—trespassers upon territory to which something else has a legal right—perhaps someone lost a rock, and he and his friends came down looking for it, in the evening—or secret agents, or emissaries, who had an appointment with certain esoteric ones near Dhurmsalla—things or beings coming down to explore, and unable to stay down long—In a way, another strange occurrence during an earthquake is suggested. The ancient Chinese tradition—the marks like hoof marks in the ground. We have thought—with a low degree of acceptance—of another world that may be in secret communication with certain esoteric ones of this earth's inhabitants—and of messages in symbols like hoof marks that are sent to some receptor, or special hill, upon this earth—and of messages that at times miscarry.
This other world comes close to this world—there are quakes—but advantage of proximity is taken to send a message—the message, designed for a receptor in India, perhaps, or in Central Europe, miscarries all the way to England—marks like the marks of the Chinese tradition are found upon a beach, in Cornwall, after an earthquake—
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Now Fort was the ultimate SOTType.
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