The news that fish rained in the city of Yasuj, in Iran, spread quickly around the world, but in the end it was all just a well-staged image manipulation maneuver.
The phenomenon would have happened last weekend, with fish, falling from the sky, hitting cars and making traffic difficult and, although this specific case is false, an episode like this is not outside the realm of possibilities.
This phenomenon has already been reported, more than once, in the world, and science explains it.
Sometimes, when a waterspout forms, fish and other animals from rivers and lakes are sucked into the clouds, which then fall as if they were rain.
The most recurrent and also most extreme example of this phenomenon lives in Honduras: in La Unin, in the Yoro region, extreme annual storms sometimes cause these rains of fish. Locals say it happens at least once a year, reported The New York Times in 2017, after storms in which no one even has the courage to be outside.
In this case, in addition to waterspouts, another theory on the table is that fish actually travel through underground currents that overflow with storms and, when the water level returns to normal, they become trapped on land.
More recently, last year, members of a remote community in the desert area of Australia reported a rain of fish, and it was not the first time either: it had happened at least in 2010 and 2004.
Also, the two explanations put forward were the same: either the fish would have come from underground waters, or it would have been sucked in by a storm and “rained” elsewhere.
CORRECTED NEWS AT 4:00 p.m.
