"Sky falls are one of the original Fortean phenomena."
Earlier this week, drivers in Coventry faced an unusual traffic hazard: hundreds of apples fell from the sky. The apples were described as being "small and green," and rained down over the intersection of Keresley Road and Kelmscote Road. It was particularly puzzling since there are no orchards or other sources of apples for quite some distance around.
The weather in England has been described as "unsettled" during this time, and the standard explanation for these sky falls is that a water spout or small tornado sucks up a collection of items and flings them far from their original location. This seems like the most plausible explanation for this phenomena, although it fails to explain why the items in sky falls are typically so uniform. In the case of this particular fall, for example, the apples were all nearly identical. No apples from a neighboring tree? No leaves or branches from that tree? JUST the apples?
The same question is true of other sky falls. Frogs and fish are the collections which most frequently fall from the sky. The explanation is that a water spout has emptied out a pond and drops its contents elsewhere. But why, then, is it just a load of frogs? Why not frogs and trout and crayfish? Why only one species of fish, and not the random collection we would expect to see from a statistical sample of some body of water?
Other things have rained from the sky, with no more explanation. Crops like wheat and oats could conceivably come from a small tornado over a single area of acreage. But what are we to make of the earthworms which fell from the sky to land on a group of Scottish children playing outside on a cloudless day earlier this year?
Sky falls are one of the original Fortean phenomena. Charles Fort was fascinated by this phenomena, which has been recorded around the world and throughout history. In earlier times, sky falls were frequently thought to be the work of witches, or divine retribution for human wrong-doings.
These days people seem more likely to attribute them to the work of prankster teenagers. And there could be some validity to this theory. I imagine it would be entirely possible to load up a giant slingshot with a few bushels of small green apples, which would no doubt fly quite far from their source!