Palm-sized fish fell from the sky during a storm in an eastern Texas town this week.
“2021 is pulling out all the tricks… including raining fish in Texarkana today, and no, this isn’t a joke,” the official Facebook account for the City of Texarkana, Texas wrote on Wednesday.
City officials explain that fish falling from the sky is an example of “animal rain.” Though “uncommon” it can happen under the right circumstances.
According to National Geographic, animal rain occurs when small animals like fish, birds, bats, snakes and frogs get caught in waterspouts, and are carried into the sky from the ground. When the waterspout loses energy, those small objects, in this case fish, fall back to the ground.
Residents of Texarkana appeared to be unfazed by the bizarre phenomenon.
Tim Brigham told KSLA that he was at Discount Wheel and Tire when the storm started. He thought it was “pretty cool” to see tiny fish falling from the sky. “I started to get me a bucket and pick them up for fishing bait,” Bringham said.
According to Mercury News, officials at an elementary school in Oroville, California reported a similar weather event in 2017.
