Unusual Skyfalls

[Stormsfury]

Pennies from heaven?

Pennies and half-pennies fell around children leaving school in Hanham, a suburb of Bristol, England, one day in 1956.

(John Michell and Robert J.M. Rickard, Phenomena: A Book of Wonders, p. 19)

[Stormsfury]

Seeds of Ivy Berries were found inside hailstones that fell on Wiltshire, England, in 1687.

(Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 16:281, January-March 1687)

[Stormsfury]

A carpenter, working on the roof of his house near Dusseldorf, Germany, on January 10th, 1951, died after being impaled by a shaft of ice. It was six feet long, six inches in diameter, and fell from the sky.

(Frank Edwards, Strangest of All)

[Stormsfury]

Sparks stood straight up from the tops of gypsum sand dunes in White Sands National Monument, New Mexico, as a thunderstorm passed overhead. Their properties were measured by instruments set up in 1971 by A.K. Kamra, who found that friction of the wind and blowing sand generated astonishingly high static voltages.

(Nature, 240:143-44, November 17, 1972)

[Stormsfury]

Residents of the capital of the Russian Republic of Dagestan say they thought they had become the victims of a nuclear attack after a thick layer of salt covered their city.

Thousands of cars and homes in Makhachkala, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, have been blanketed by a five centimetre layer of the salty substance.

But the head of the local hydrometeorology and environmental monitoring centre, Pyotr Postavik, said: "Strong winds picked up small particles of sand and dust from open-cast mines in the Caucasus mountains. They mixed with water raised from the Caspian Sea's surface.

Link to this story...

[Colin]

Wow... this is some awesome and very unusual stuff! :o

[Stormsfury]

Local Story
April 16th, 1875 - In Walterboro, SC, a tornado carried a 600-pound wooden beam for a quarter mile and a 75-pound chicken coup for 4 miles. Strong tornadoes in the Coastal Carolina Plain are quite the rarity.

Unusual Skyfall in other parts of the world
Immediately after a tremendous peal of thunder in 1849, a block of ice 20 feet in circumference and of a "proportionate thickness" fell on Balvullich Farm, near Ord, on the Isle of Skye, Scotland. The ice was almost entirely transparent and composed of square and diamond-shaped crystals from one to three inches long. No other hail or snow was seen at the time.

(The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 47:371, 1849)

[Stormsfury]

Here's one straight from my website and also from my hometown ... which I still live just 25 miles NW.

September 4th, 1886 - A shower of warm stones fell outside the Charleston News and Courier offices in Charleston, SC. The first one occurred at 2:30 am. A second shower followed at 7:30 am and then the last one occurred at 1:30 pm in the afternoon. As far as anyone could see, the stones seemed to have fallen from somewhere directly above the newspaper office, in a small area. They fell with great force, and several broke on the pavement. Witnesses described the stones as polished pebbles of flint, the smalles being the size of a grape and the largest being the size of an egg. About a quart of these stones well collected. (Charleston News and Courier, September 6th, 1886). The same newspaper reported earlier that Charleston had been struck by a major earthquake on August 31st.

[Rainband]

Wow where the heck did they come from?? I bet "a stones throw" got redefined that day!!!!! :o

[Stormsfury]

Survivors of a 1965 tornado in Toledo, OH, reported

"We were shaken up and our trailer along with others was dented badly from hail the size of baseballs. The beautiful electric blue light that was around the tornado was something to see, and balls of orange and lightning came from the cone point of the tornado. The cone or tail of the tornado reminded me of an elephant trunk. It would dip down as if to get food then rise again as if the trunk of elephant would put the food in its mouth. While the trunk was up the tornado was not dangerous, just when the point came down is when the damage started. My son and I watched the orange balls of fire roll down the Race Way Park then it lifted and the roof came off one of the horse barns" ....

(Science, 153:1213-20, September 9, 1966)

[Pileus]

Was wondering if there is continuing study on the lightning phenomenon
known as sprites that occur well above lightning discharges almost to
the edge of space.

[Stormsfury]

Was wondering if there is continuing study on the lightning phenomenon
known as sprites that occur well above lightning discharges almost to
the edge of space.

Yep ... studies continue dealing with both the red sprites and the blue jets which were discovered by accident ... I'll post something about those later when I find that information again ...