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In Honduras, the Lluvia de Peces (Rain of Fishes) is a unique phenomenon that has been occurring for more than a century on a yearly basis in the country of Honduras. It occurs in the Departamento de Yoro, between the months of May and July. Witnesses of this phenomenon state that it begins with is a dark cloud in the sky followed by lightning, thunder, strong winds and heavy rain for 2 to 3 hours. Once the rain has stopped, hundreds of living fish are found on the ground. People take the fish home to cook and eat them. Although some experts have tried to explain the Rain of Fishes as a natural meteorological phenomenon, the fish are not sea water fish, but fresh water fish; they are not dead, but alive; they are not blind, they have eyes; they are not big fish, but small; and the type of fish is not found elsewhere in the area.
There is no valid scientific explanation for this phenomenon. Many people believe this phenomenon occurs because of Father José Manuel Subirana, a Spanish catholic missionary and considered by many to be a Saint. He visited Honduras from 1856-1864, and upon encountering so many poor people, prayed for 3 days and 3 nights asking God for a miracle to help the poor people by providing food. The Rain of Fishes has occurred ever since.
Other recent similar meterological phenomenon include the rain of frogs and toads in Serbia (2005) and London (1998), and rains of fish in India (2006) and Wales (2004).
Other references:
- link - The latest in a series of bizarre British weather phenomena is a rain of fish. It may sound like the stuff of legend, but such events are increasingly well documented.... On Wednesday, the village of Knighton, in Powys, was reported to have endured such a fishy deluge. Not a story easily believed - an odd site for a Biblical-style plague, one might think, perhaps to be followed by the waters of the nearby River Teme running red with blood? But in fact, as the Met Office explains, such occurrences are not as uncommon as they may sound. Not only are they not quite the miraculous events that they seem, rains of fish - and other even more surprising objects - are reported with some frequency.
- Rain of Fish - link - on Tuesday afternoon of May 15, 1900, fish did rain from the sky at two places in Olneyville in Rhode Island. And so many fish rained down that people collected them in buckets, displayed them in their homes, and brought them into saloons to gawk at. Rhode Islanders have endured many strange ordeals, but none had ever lived through a rainfall of fish.
- "So far as reported," said The Journal, "the rainfall of fish occurred in two places. The better fishing ground was on Harris Avenue, near Grove Street railroad crossing. Here hundreds of pout, from 2 inches to 4.5 inches in length, fell on an area of about a quarter of an acre."
- "The other fishing ground was on Joslin Street, near Manton Avenue, on high ground, far above the tops of the mill chimneys situated on the lower level of Harris Avenue. Here the fall of fish was comparatively small. But there was a much better variety, for there were small perch as well as pout and a pail was half filled with them."
- "There are stories that this man or that man was prompt to gather hailstones and holding them in his hands was surprised to find when the icy covering melted away he still had a little white pebble such as are found on the shores of rivers or ponds. But no one has thus far been found who actually had hail melt in his hand and leave a shining white pebble."
- 1983 book Hurricanes, Storms and Tornados, Soviet scientist D.V. Nalivkin recounted numerous times when fish have similarly fallen from the sky—as well as other times when it rained crabs in England, rats in Norway, hopping toads (which fell on Napoleon's army), and the wonderful day in 1940 when one thousand silver coins fell upon the Soviet Union.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raining_animals