Look up. Is there anything making its way down from the heavens to collide with your dome? No? Good, you can read the rest of this article safely. Throughout human history, there have been reports of bizarre cascades of odd objects falling from the sky, and most of them have gone completely unexplained. In this feature, we'll tell ten stories of very unusual types of rain.
Toads
One of the most common animals to fall from the sky is the humble toad - even the Bible has a story about poor hapless amphibians raining down on Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Waterspouts can lift huge numbers of frogs and toads into the air and deposit them miles away, and that's in all likelihood what happened in Lalain, France in 1794 during the French Revolutionary War. While a contingent of French soldiers squared off with the Austrians, a huge rainfall brought in a deluge of toads so potent that the men needed to abandon their trenches to wait it out. When it ended, they were shocked to discover hundreds of toads in the folds of their clothing and the brims of their hats. (Photo Credit: TCDavis via Flickr CC)
Spiders
Just as a warning, many of the items in this list will probably trigger some serious heebie-jeebies in the phobic. If you're afraid of things crawling on you, you might want to click forward to the next one. In 2007, a group of people took a trip to the Salta province of Argentina for Spring Break. While hiking up the San Bernardo mountain, they noticed an unusual number of spiders covering the ground. One looked up to discover the reason: arachnids were falling from the sky in droves. Hundreds of spiders floated through the air, many unfurling tendrils of webbing as they fell. Amazingly, he kept the presence of mind to snap pictures, which are extremely creepy. (Photo Credit: Hpatey via Flickr CC)
Worms
Gym class is already pretty unpleasant when you're in elementary school, but an unexplained rain of wriggling earthworms makes it that much worse. In 2011, a group of second year boys at Scotland's Galashiel Academy were out playing a game of soccer during phys ed when they heard a bizarre noise. It turned out to be hundreds of worms plummeting from the sky onto them. Needless to say, the kids ran off screaming to hold class inside. There's still no explanation for what caused the unusual invertebrate rain, but freak weather is the most likely suspect. (Photo Credit: Guilhem Vellut via Flickr CC)
Golf Balls
It used to be that golf balls were a valuable enough commodity that teenagers could make decent money by recovering them from lakes and hazards, washing them off and re-selling them to the course. So it must have been a wild time in the Florida town of Punta Gorda one night in 1969, when a massive, unexpected rain of golf balls fell from the sky. The balls were distributed all over town, and police had no explanation for them. The most likely event that happened is that a small localized typhoon sucked up water from a pond at a nearby course, bringing a payload of hundreds of lost balls with it. (Photo Credit: Team Holdatzky Photography via Flickr CC)
Meat
The Great Kentucky Meat Shower is one of the most disgusting aerial downpours ever recorded. In 1876, a small area in Bath County, Kentucky was deluged with ragged, bleeding chunks of unidentified meat for several minutes. Because this was a less hygienic time, a few bystanders actually picked up chunks of the meat and ate it, stating that it tasted like venison or mutton. Samples were taken for analysis, but the primitive tools of the day couldn't figure out if it was the meat of a horse or a human infant. The most believable explanation is that a group of buzzards flying over decided to simultaneously vomit recently-eaten carrion into the town for reasons nobody will ever know. (Photo Credit: Grant Hutchinson via Flickr CC)
A Live Shark
Well, this is horrifying. A golf course in San Juan Capistrano (what is it with golf and weird stuff falling from the sky) got a surprise visit in 2012 when a two-foot leopard shark came plummeting out of the air and landed on the 12th tee. The shocked fish was amazingly still alive when it hit the green, and an employee managed to rush it back to the clubhouse, submerge it in salt water and save the poor dumb animal's life. The general consensus is that a bird snatched the shark from the water to eat it, discovered it bit off more than it could chew and dropped it in a panic, hoping the golfers would just play through. (Photo Credit: Rad Carper via Flickr CC)
Orange Snow
Snow is a pretty normal weather condition, especially in Siberia. But one February in 2007 saw a snow fall unlike anything the Omsk region has ever seen. An area of almost 580 square miles was covered by a bizarre cold, orange substance that was greasy to the touch and contained tremendously elevated quantities of iron. Authorities claimed that the bizarre snowfall wasn't dangerous to humans, but still recommended that people or livestock not ingest it. The general belief was that it was caused by particulate matter from a sandstorm in Kazakhstan being sucked into a storm cloud. (Photo Credit: via Youtube)
Fish
Alaska is one of the United States' most prolific fishing states, with trawlers heading out to the Pacific to catch all manner of edible sea creatures. Residents of Fairbanks, however, weren't too happy to see foot-long Arctic lampreys earlier in 2015, mostly because they were on their front lawns. The massive, eel-like fish have no jaws, instead boasting a horrifying suction ring lined with teeth. The nightmarish beasts were probably dropped on the town by gulls who picked them up for food and changed their minds. (Photo Credit: BrianEyes)
Money
Not all rains are horrifying - a German woman in the small town of Worms got an unexpected blessing from above in 2007 as she was driving one day. She first noticed a weird atmospheric anomaly in her rear view mirror, but as she got closer discovered that it was a small blizzard of Euro notes falling from the sky. The woman frantically tried to grab as much of it as she could while driving, and then in an act of civic responsibility took her haul to the police. The woman and the cops returned to the scene, but couldn't find any more money and the mysterious currency rain has to this day not been accounted for. (Photo Credit: via Youtube)
A Cow
Most of the animals that we've featured in this list are relatively lightweight, so it's not terribly shocking that they wound up several hundred feet above land. But a dairy cow? It happened in 1997. When a rescue crew picked up the survivors of a sunken boat in the Sea of Japan, they were flabbergasted by the excuse given for the shipwreck by the sailors: a cow had fallen out of the sky and punched a hole right through their hull. Further investigation revealed the men were telling the truth - a Russian cargo plane had swiped a cow from a field, but when the bovine started freaking out on the flight, they pushed it out the hold over the ocean, where by a ridiculous stroke of luck it turned into a mooing meteor and smashed the ship. (Photo Credit: Anna Briggs via Flickr CC)