Twice now in the past few months we have been struck by stories of a strange rain coming down from the sky in torrents in the UK. The first incident, which happened in December, saw tremendous hails of apples raining down on the highway in Coventry. The second incident, which included a torrent of unidentified globs of gel soon followed in January. And that mystery is on the verge of being solved, according to scientists. But what will they reveal?
It all started as a novelty, a simple story of mystery, of interest only to those who indulged in excerpts of Forteana. But then when put in the context of other mystery rainfalls, and the fact that the substance itself had been gathered up to be studied, it was clear this story would be back. Theories ranged everywhere from eggs to airplane chemicals.
When Steve Hornsby stood out in his garage in the midst of what appeared to be a tremendous hailstorm he was concerned, but not overwhelmed by the meteorological mystery of a sudden hail. It was only after the rain subsided, when he looked out onto his lawn and saw the blue gelatinous balls that he considered calling in help to solve the mystery. When he attempted to gather them up, they quickly seemed to be melting or otherwise not maintaining their shape. The strangest part of it was the fact that they were slipping away from him, and yet somehow had apparently rained from a great height without losing their shape from the impact with the ground. But after several of the samples were sent to a lab, all will soon enough be revealed.
The samples, first of all, have already turned out to not be organic in nature. This rules out many of the more interesting theories surrounding the mysterious droplets, including the theory that it could be some form of alien life form. At the moment, scientists are leaning in the direction of a chemical compound, such as hydrating jelly. But theorizing that the gel could be extraterrestrial in nature isn’t entirely new. And some of the samples previously collected from other unexplained rainfalls have proven quite strange.
In 2006 a red rain fell over Kerala, India that was collected by many witnesses and then sent to laboratories for study. What they found were tiny red particles suspended and mixed with the regular rain that looked organic in nature, but extremely difficult to identify aside from that. The fact that an unknown fluid raining from the sky found nowhere else in nature was enough to cause many to wonder if the reason for the difficulty was its extraterrestrial nature.
But if the wait for answers proves to be too much as scientists at Bournemouth quickly categorize the substance, there are plenty of other stories of strange weather to keep us watching the skies in the mean time. And it’s a phenomenon that seems to be reported with increasing regularity.