The highest gusts were 49 mph at Fort Johnson, 48 mph on Tybee Island and the Don Holt Bridge in North Charleston, 47 mph at Buoy 41008 and Fort Pulasksi, and 46 mph at Beaufort. Strong west and northwest winds developed in wake of an arctic cold front, resulting in blowout tides and wind gusts past 40 or 45 mph.Even the beaches experienced a freeze with temperatures in the upper 20s and lower 30s. It was a cold morning across many areas, with readings as low as 14 at Harleyville, Jamestown and Round O in South Carolina.Dense sea fog closes the Charleston Harbor and also impacts the nearby Atlantic waters, as visibilities fall to near zero.It is short-lived however, as an arctic cold front quickly moves through with isolated reports of trees and powerlines down, as winds reach as high as 47 mph on Tybee Island and 42 mph at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah. Dense fog closes the Charleston Harbor and also impacts the adjacent Charleston County Atlantic waters with visibilities down under 1/2 nm.The highest wind was at the Sabsoon R2 Tower, which recorded 54 mph. Winds reached as high as 40 to 50 mph across parts of southern South Carolina, southeast Georgia and the adjacent Atlantic waters.An F0 tornado briefly touched down, significantly damaging a mobile home, causing minor damage to another mobile home, and knocking down trees in southern Jenkins County, GA.So keep an eye out, because next time the clouds open up, it may be more than raindrops that keep falling on your head.

Sometimes after a presentation people pull Cerveny aside, saying, “Well, when I was a kid…” “Everybody in that kind of a setting loves to hear about odd and unusual weather,” he says. Stories of raining fish, frogs or even turtles are an effective teaching tool for Cerveny when he lectures or gives presentations. Even though fewer personal accounts of strange weather have not necessarily hurt meteorology, “maybe it has taken away some of the fun of it,” says Cerveny. “They tend to sound more kooky now if they report it,” he says. Cerveny explains that today, logical explanations through science are more readily available, so there is less mysticism behind strange weather phenomena. Also, people are less likely to report any strange occurrences now than they were 100 years ago. Fewer people are asked to describe the odd objects they see falling from the sky, says Cerveny, who is also a professor of weather and climate at Arizona State University. Now that scientists have advanced technology like Doppler radar, they are less reliant on personal accounts. In the early 1900s, Charles Fort, a collector of stories of odd weather happenings, theorized that there was an ocean orbiting the earth that occasionally dropped its creatures onto the planet, writes author Richard Cerveny in his book, Freaks of the Storm. Still, people have reported such events for centuries. Fewer than 10 occurrences have been reported in the past year, according to a news search, so local five-day forecasts probably won’t include fish showers. Raining fish is not a common weather phenomenon. Carl Hennige writes in an e-mail that there was “an enormous windstorm” just before the fish fell. The Henniges’ condo is just one mile above Lake Natoma and the Nimbus fish hatchery, where they think the fish came from. People as far as 100 miles inland have experienced raining fish, he explains.įish can also be sucked up from rivers. Depending on how far they travel and how high they are taken into the atmosphere, the fish are sometimes dead by the time they rain down.

It’s like the fish are swimming in the cloud, says Renno. Even if the waterspout stops spinning, the fish in the cloud can be carried over land, buffeted up and down and around with the cloud’s winds until its currents no longer keep the flying fish in the atmosphere.

Depending on how fast the winds are whipping, anything that is within about one yard of the surface of the water, including sailboats or fish of different sizes, can be lifted into the air, says Nilton Renno, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Michigan.Ī waterspout can sometimes successfully suck small objects like fish out of the water and all the way up into the cloud. They churn at speeds up to 200 miles an hour, but dissipate when rain begins to fall from their host cloud. Waterspouts, which are essentially tornadoes over water, form when cold air moves over warm water. Neither were people in Manna, India, who reported seeing live, pencil-sized fish falling from the sky in July.

It was raining fish.Īlthough it may sound like some sort of mythical event, the Henniges weren’t telling tales. Just before last New Year’s Eve, Carl and Kathy Hennige of Folsom, California e-mailed their local newspaper to report some strange weather.

Watch it was raining that night 2005