Modern Mysteries

Earthworms rain from the sky over Norway

By T.K. Randall
April 17, 2015 ·  15 comments

The worms were thought to have been carried upwards by strong winds. Image Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0 Brian Kerry Mysterious downpours of live animals have actually been recorded for hundreds of years with fish, frogs and insects being some of the most frequently reported critters to inexplicably rain from above.

Now the phenomenon has turned up in Norway where a series of strange downpours has seen large numbers of earthworms drop from the sky, in particular in the high altitude mountain regions where skiers have been coming across them lying on the snow.

"I saw thousands of earthworms on the surface of the snow," said biology teacher Karstein Erstad who had been enjoying the slopes near Bergen. "When I found them on the snow they seemed to be dead, but when I put them in my hand I found that they were alive. "Scientists believe that the worms were lifted up in to the air by the wind and carried great distances through the planet's upper atmosphere before being deposited back down to Earth.

Similar incidents of flying worms have also been reported before including in Sweden in 1920 and more recently in Luisiana in 2007 when they rained down on a police department employee.

"There have been reports of lots of types of living creatures falling from the sky," said Liz Bentley of the Royal Meteorology Society. "They get drawn up in huge drafts. For example fish, frogs and things like that have been reported to fall from clouds. It's happened for hundreds of years."

Source: New Zealand Herald | Comments (15)

Tags: Worms, Rain, Norway