Reports of unusual weather phenomenon of old....

[Weather-history]

Here are a few reports of some unusual weather phenomenon that was reported to the Times

14th August 1849: 20ft block of ice falls from sky

Black rain July 1850

Shower of fish

From the 11th of July 1860

St Elmo's fire

[0000]

so what caused fish rain?????

[Louby]

here is one explaination Phil :lol: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3582802.stm

[0000]

here is one explaination Phil http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3582802.stm

Thanks louby that was very informative,so you're not just a pretty face eh? :lol:

[Weather-history]

Some more unusual events

24th July 1843: Strange tidal effect in Mount's Bay

15th November 1859: A lunar corona

Optical phenomenon

Tsunami at Wexford? 22nd September 1854

Glaze: February 1879

[Louby]

Tsunami at Wexford? 22nd September 1854

are there any records of volcanic or earthquake activity for that date? does anyone know where I could find the info?

[Coast]

Tsunami at Wexford? 22nd September 1854 are there any records of volcanic or earthquake activity for that date? does anyone know where I could find the info?

You asked for this lot Louby!!!

From a report By British Association for the Advancement of Science:

Edited June 18, 2008 by Coast

[Louby]

Thank you Coast shall save them and have a good read later

[Karen Ann]

As a child I experienced a hay and frog shower. I believe it was in the mega hot summer of '76 but I could be a year or two out. I was only a little one then but can remember it very clearly. It was a hot dry day, we were playing in the road at the front of our house, the wind picked up and a whirlwind was clearly visible to the west of us. A few moments later hay and small clods of earth began falling, shortly followed by a few spots of rain and the odd frog thrown in for good measure.

It's documented in a book somewhere (don't ask me which one as I've read so many books over that years about 'weird goings on'). I remember reading it when I was about 18 and being surprised that the town I lived in was mentioned in a book and also that I could remember the event myself.

My dad always says what he remembers the most about it, was the two young girls (teenagers) who were walking up our road at the time. He said they'd definately caught the brunt of the 'hay and clods of earth' shower. He said by the time they'd reached the end of our garden, they looked like they'd been dragged through a hedge backwards and then been for a dust bath and he said their faces of astonishment were a picture!

[Rustynailer]

This thread is cool

One thing. Regarding the block of ice at the beginning of the thread.

Given the date of the ice fall, it implies that large ice that falls out of the sky, are not necessarily off of iced up airplanes, which my education led me to believe

Edited June 20, 2008 by Rustynailer

[BARRY]

I was working as a ferryman on the salcombe east portlemouth ferry,in the late seventies it was the middle of the afternoon when there was this sound of rushing water,it was about half tide on the ebb when me and other craft were caught in surge of water that left us completely unable to steer and we swept up stream to batson creek and left high and dry when the surge retreated it was a bit scary, and put the fear of god into the passengers.

I think it was to do with a thunder storm out at sea

Edited June 20, 2008 by BARRY

[Weather-history]

Here is a possible report of ball lightning from 13th of May 1906

On Sunday, 13th May 1906, I was watching the heavy rain, hearing the rattling of large hailstones and listening to the near and deafening noise of rumbling thunder, when suddenly I thought "How strange I have not seen one flash of lightning!" I leaned forward to have a wider range through the open window, when I saw a large, dark egg-shaped ball swiftly falling straight down from the sky in the open space between two elm trees on the lawn and a fir tree. When the ball came to about the height of the latter, it suddenly collapsed and sparks of fire flew about in all directions like a magnificent firework. I was so startled that I fell back, but afterwards looked out to see if there was any impression made on the ground. I could see nothing, sheep, lambs, the cob and pony, were grazing, but not near the spot. Two miles away glass was broken and grass burned during the storm.

When the ball split, a solid lump of rather light looking fire (like the colour of a blaze) issued forth at first more from the bottom than the sides and this emitted thousands of red-hot (bright deep red) sparks, taking a circular shape. It all happened in the wink of an eye. It seemed to my sight the size of a goose's egg, but my naturally long sight is defective from age. The servant describes it as "a large globe". She is near sighted.

S.E.L.G

East Woolsery, Morchard Bishop

[Osbourne One-Nil]

Another PM from Stella suggests it was actually the size of a swan's egg.

[Weather-history]

Hereford: 22nd March 1877

"On 22nd, about noon, a curious and rather startling phenomenon was witnessed near the timber wharf, on the canal, opposite Monkmoor Street, Hereford. Just at the time, there was a very slight snowstorm, and the wind was heard by Mr Roberts and others occupied about the wharf, to come from a northern direction, with a rumbling noise resembling that of an approaching train, and striking on the broad part of the canal, it caught up a bulk of water, some two hogsheads or so in quantity, which it lifted upwards for 20ft in the air, and carried a considerable distance over land towards Barr's Court station. There its progress was as suddenly arrested, and the mass of water was seen to fall in large drops like a heavy thunder shower. Of course all who witnessed this rare occurrence were not a little alarmed as well as interested, but no damage was done"

Hengoed, Salop: 26th March 1877

"Between 3 and 4pm, a most remarkable shower of very black rain fell."

[Coast]

More frogs, toads and fish from the sky:

In August, 1804 near Toulouse, France, a "tremendous number of little toads, one to two months old...were seen to fall from a great thick cloud that appeared suddenly in a sky that had been cloudless". In 1844, so many frogs fell on Sittingbourne, Kent, that a local clergyman said that, when he held out his hat, it was filled with the creatures in under three minutes. Newspapers compared the fall with the rain of toads on Acle, Norfolk, in 1653. On July 12, 1873, as reported in Scientific American, "A shower of frogs which darkened the air and covered the ground for a long distance is the reported result of a recent rainstorm at Kansas City, Mo."

London newspapers reported that on August 17,1921 innumerable little frogs appeared during a thunderstorm in the northern part of London. Mrs S. Mowday went to see a Royal Navy display on the Meadow Platt in Sutton Park, near Birmingham, on June 12th, 1954, and recounted:

"I attended the display with my young son and daughter. It was a Saturday and there were frequent heavy showers...We tried to shelter from a shower under the trees...when we were bombarded by tiny frogs, which seemed to come down with the rain. There were literally thousands of them. They descended on our umbrellas, on us and we were afraid to walk for fear of treading on them."

A British frog fall also occurred in October 1987, when large numbers of rose coloured albino frogs fell on several occasions around Stroud, Cirencester and Cheltenham. Similar frogs, described as "pinkish in colour with an almost transparent skin," fell on Croydon in March 1998.

Explanations vary, but few are satisfactory. Some suggest that waterspouts and tornados occasionally pick up a litter or two of fertilised frogs' eggs and then hang in the humid summer sky for weeks as the tadpoles mature, nurtured in warm vapour and suspended by steady high-altitude winds. The right kind of front moving north across Africa could pick up very young frogs in the jungles and drift north with them at high altitude to dump them on England. Sneff tells me that "the waterspout picks up the entire contents of ponds, small lakes etc and lifts them into the sky." To the more closed-minded, it may seem more believable that large hail fell, and then after the hail melted, bystanders noted frogs on the ground, revelling in the moist soil.

Location: Sutton Coldfield - Sutton Park

Type: Other

Date / Time: June 1954

Further Comments: Baby frogs, no bigger than a thumbnail, were said to have fallen from the sky during a heavy rain shower. The downpour lasted for around five minutes, depositing thousands of the amphibians.

Sylvia Mowday, from Sutton Park, Birmingham, was walking through the park on 12 June 1954, when there was a sudden downpour. She said, “My four-year old daughter put up her little red umbrella and we heard things thudding against it. To our amazement it was a shower of frogs, coming down from the sky, hundreds of them. We looked up and saw frogs coming down like snowflakes”.

The 1954 Sutton Park event is mentioned in a number of places and seems to have caused quite a stir.

Other strange 'showers' include "gushes of periwinkles" that fell on Worcester, together with heaps of crabs, on May 28, 1881, where they covered a number of fields. Several correspondents wrote to the local papers, describing the winkles and crabs, and suggesting that they must have been left there by a fishmonger. This explanation led American researcher, Charles Hoy Fort (1874-1932) to imagine a possible scenario:

A fishmonger, with a procession of carts, loaded with several kinds of crabs and periwinkles, and with a dozen energetic assistants, appeared at a time when nobody on a busy road was looking. The fishmonger and his assistants grabbed sacks of periwinkles, and ran in a frenzy, slinging the things into fields on both sides of the road.

Fort catalogued hundreds of similar strange falls, including live and dead frogs, fish, frog-spawn, eels, snails and snakes. He suggested various possible explanations, including a cosmic practical joker using "teleportation" (a word he invented) and a "Super Sargasso Sea" hovering above the earth, which occasionally drops its contents on us. Fort wrote that he did not believe his own explanations, for he was a skeptic, opposed to all forms of belief. His main aim was to challenge the certainties of the scientific establishment.

Since Fort's day, many more such falls have been reported. In March 1998, a lady in Bracknell rang the Croydon Met Office to report that an early morning rain shower was accompanied by hundreds of dead frogs, which were scattered over her front garden and surrounding streets. Another local said that his dog tried to eat the frogs as he took it for a walk. On August 8, 2000, the fishing port of Yarmouth was showered with dead, but fresh, sprats.

A shower of fish was witnessed by Kevin Kell who described to BBC Radio Shropshire what he saw.

Mr Kell described how he was on his way to the meeting at the social room in St Edward's Close, Knighton, at about 2.45pm on Wednesday, 18 August 2004. There had been a thunderstorm and a heavy shower just before he left his home, but on arriving at the meeting he was surprised to see other group members standing around, looking at the pavement. Each wore a confused expression, and as Mr Kell approached he saw why.

"There were at least a dozen small fish - like minnows - lying dead on the pavement," he told BBC Radio Shropshire's Shropshire Tonight programme. "We were just puzzled, really."

Yet in an even more bizarre development, some of the fish were still showing signs of life when they first landed, Mr Kell said. However, those looking for a mystery (or miracle) of fish falling from the sky are likely to be disappointed to learn that there is a rational explanation for it.

Bob Rickard is founding editor of the Fortean Times, the journal of strange phenomena worldwide. He says that fish falling with rain, although unusual, happens quite often. OK. We admit that raining three-headed frogs may be stretching a point, but it was a good picture. He said: "Fish have been observed to be sucked up from the sea by tornados, but it usually only happens within a few miles of the coast." So fish falling in Knighton - a good 50 miles from the nearest piece of coastline - is rare indeed.

The Met Office says these occurrences are not as uncommon as they may sound. In fact they are reported quite often. Other than rain itself, fish are the most common thing reported falling from the sky, but rains of frogs, tomatoes and even lumps of coal have been known to fall too. Apparently, given strong enough winds, such as found in the thunderstorms that lashed Shropshire on the day the fish fell, small whirlwinds and mini-tornadoes may form. And when they travel over water they can pick up small objects, such as fish and frogs and carry them for a distance of a few miles.

Edited June 26, 2008 by Coast

[Weather-history]

From 5th of November 1901

"I walked from City to Camden town between 2 and 3 o'clock this morning and I was walking along the Camden Park Road when I saw one of the most remarkable phenomena of its kind that I have ever observed - a dense wall or bank of fog in Camden Road just about 6ft high. Above it and in Torriano Avenue on the other side of it, there was no trace even of haze. On entering the fog, I found it so thick that I could not see the ground at my feet. Standing on tiptoe I found that my eyes were above the fog level and so far as I could see this dense bank of fog extended up and down the Camden Road. It might perhaps be more accuratley compared to a river of fog for it was flowing rapidly out towards Holloway, although there was scarcely, a breath of air stirring."

[0000]

From 5th of November 1901

"I walked from City to Camden town between 2 and 3 o'clock this morning and I was walking along the Camden Park Road when I saw one of the most remarkable phenomena of its kind that I have ever observed - a dense wall or bank of fog in Camden Road just about 6ft high. Above it and in Torriano Avenue on the other side of it, there was no trace even of haze. On entering the fog, I found it so thick that I could not see the ground at my feet. Standing on tiptoe I found that my eyes were above the fog level and so far as I could see this dense bank of fog extended up and down the Camden Road. It might perhaps be more accuratley compared to a river of fog for it was flowing rapidly out towards Holloway, although there was scarcely, a breath of air stirring."

the most dangerous drive home i've ever had occured to me a couple of years ago near tow law.the car up to the window was in thick fog but at my level it was brilliant sunshine.it felt like what i immagine a flying carpet would be like but it was impossible to see the road.