Jakarta –
In a remote Australian outback town, a strange phenomenon occurs, raining fish. Residents of the town of Lajamanu, a small area in the arid Northern Territory, about 900 kilometers south of Darwin, were shocked by hundreds of fish falling from the sky like rain.
“We saw a big storm coming here and at first we thought it was just rain. But when it started raining we also saw fish falling,” said local official Andrew Johnson Japanangka. ABC News, Friday (24/2/2023).
Japanangka dubbed the strange phenomenon as a blessing from God. He added that children in the town rushed to collect live fish that had fallen from the sky and stored them in jars.
Queensland Museum fish expert Jeff Johnson said the fish that fell were known as spangled perch, or spangled grunters, which are the most common type of freshwater fish in Australia.
Although this incident sounds absurd and strange, this is not the first rain of fish phenomenon that has occurred there. Similar events occurred in Lajamanu in 2010, and were previously recorded in 2004 and 1974.
Penny McDonald, a resident of the town, said she was present when the incident happened 40 years ago. “I woke up in the morning, I was working at school at the time, and the dirt road outside was full of fish. It was amazing,” he said.
How the Rain of Fish Occurs
Events like this are really just fish that used to be in the sea and then scatter to land in the form of rain. But how do they reach the sky?
The best explanation for this question is that raining fish occurs when a strong air disturbance, such as a tornado, lifts water and fish into the air.
When tornadoes cross bodies of water, they are known as waterspouts. Tornadoes will suck up any water they pass, including fish or other creatures swimming in the water.
The tornado then carried the fish away from the water. As it gets weaker, the tornado loses the energy to hold up the objects and fish it’s carrying so it rains down on land.
This explanation is agreed by Professor Ernest Agee of Purdue University in American’s Indiana. The rain of fish is the result of a tornado, not the fish falling from the clouds like rain.
“I witnessed a small pond that was literally sucked in by a passing tornado. So it doesn’t make sense for fish and other living things to come down from the clouds in the sky,” he explained.
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(rns/fay)
