On Wednesday afternoon, the city of Texarkana, Texas was hit with a heavy rainstorm when some of the residents noticed the rain was highly unusual, dumping small fish onto dry land.

The phenomenon was witnessed by James Audirsch, who works at the Orr Maxx used car dealership on Summerhill Road in Texarkana.

“There was a loud crack of thunder and when we opened up the bay door, I looked outside and it was raining real hard and a fish hit the ground, and then I said, ‘It’s raining fish!’ Brad was like, ‘No it’s not,’ and I’m like, “No, it really is!’” and fish were droppin’ here and everywhere,” Audrisch told local news.

Several nearby businesses were also pelted with fish, identified as young bass about 4-5 inches long.  

A bizarre as fish raining from the sky sounds, it is not entirely unheard of. Rural inhabitants in Yoro, Honduras claim ‘fish rain’ happens there every summer for the past hundred years in a phenomenon they call Lluvia de Peces they attribute to a “miracle”. The residents collect the fish for their kitchen tables, but selling it is prohibited as it is considered a “gift from God” intended to feed the poor. Despite several attempts to discover the source of the strange phenomenon, scientists remain baffled.

Such “fish rains” having been recorded throughout history. In the first century CE, Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder documented storms of frogs and fish. In 1794, French soldiers saw toads fall from the sky during heavy rain at Lalain, near the French city of Lille. In Kansas City, Mo., it rained frogs in 1873.

More recent cases have also been recorded, In Japan, tadpoles rained down in 2009. In Australia, it rained spangled perch in 2010. In 2017, fish fell from the sky over an elementary school in California.

According to National Geographic, animal rain occurs when small animals get swept up in waterspouts, which form when storm clouds swirl to create a tornado-like column of moving, cloud-filled wind over a body of water. The waterspouts can form over everything from ponds to lakes to oceans. Once the small animals are swept up, the waterspouts and updrafts move over land. As their energy diminishes, the storm clouds have to let go of their heaviest objects first, which would be the animals. This causes the animals to fall back down to Earth. Once the heavier animals have fallen, lighter objects or raindrops usually follow.

However, this aspect of the phenomenon has never been witnessed by scientists.

Prophecy of fishes

The prophet Zephaniah begins his prophecy with a scenario of dying wildlife, specifically mentioning fish.

I will sweep away man and beast; I will sweep away the birds of the sky And the fish of the sea. I will make the wicked stumble, And I will destroy mankind From the face of the earth —declares Hashem. Zephaniah 1:3

Rabbi Yosef Dayan, a former member of the nascent Sanhedrin, said that such occurrences are signs of nature being directed by God.

“More and more, we are seeing natural occurrences that aren’t natural as we know it,” Rabbi Dayan told Israel365 News. “When I was younger, we heard of tsunamis and earthquakes, but now they are commonplace. Instead of one or two, there are some places in the world that are experiencing hundreds of earthquakes at a time.”

“Of course, everything is directed by God,” Rabbi Dayan continued. “But all these strange natural events are coming faster and faster to tell us that something exceptional is on the way. A person would have to be totally asleep to see fish falling from the sky and not wonder what is happening.”