The According to Dire Dawa Agriculture, Water, Mining and Energy Bureau has reported a ran of Fish falling in a number of locations in and around the city of Dire Diwa in northeastern Ethiopia which fell about 11.30 pm on Wednesday 20 January 2015. This has been widely proclaimed as a miracle locally, though experts from organizations such as the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Institute and Department of Meteorology at Haromaya University have been a pains to explain that this is a natural, if somewhat uncommon, phenomenon.
Fish which fell as rain in Dire Diwa, Ethiopia, on 20 January 2015. ECADForum.
Rains of Fish (and occasionally other small aquatic animals such as Amphibians) occur when tornadoes over bodies of water suck up volumes of water including the Fish. That this could lead to rains of Fish very far from the site seems counterintuitive, but tornadoes are capable of lifting heavy objects such as cars and even houses and throwing them considerable distances, and small animals such as Fish can be thrown kilometers into the air by such events, falling to Earth a long way from the site where they were picked up.
The location of Dire Diwa. Google Maps..
Tornadoes are formed by winds within large thunder storms called super
cells. Supercells are large masses of warm water-laden air formed by hot
weather over the sea, when they encounter winds at high altitudes the
air within them begins to rotate. The air pressure will drop within
these zones of rotation, causing the air within them so rise, sucking
the air beneath them up into the storm, this creates a zone of rotating
rising air that appears to extend downwards as it grows; when it hits
the ground it is called a tornado.
See also...
Texas house carried 100 m by tornado. A house in Burnet County, Texas, has been lifted off its foundations by a
tornado, then deposited 100 m away in a field with its occupants
unharmed. The incident happened on the evening of Thursday 12 June 2014,
when a tornado touched down close to the house...
Flooding after Mumbai hit by freak waves. Parts of the Indian city of Mumbai are suffering from flooding after
being hit by a series of freak waves on Thursday 12 June 2014. The waves
occurred around high tide, and rose over four meters above expected
levels, inundating low lying coastal parts of the city...
Snowfall in Namibia The borders of modern Namibia were drawn up on a map at the Berlin conference of 1884, named of South West Africa,
and given to Germany as a colony. The germans ruled it from then until
1915, when it was invaded by South African troops during the First World
War.
Follow Sciency Thoughts on Facebook.
