Ooh, It’s Raining Frogs, Yeah

While it’s doubtful that the Weather Girls would advise you to leave your umbrellas at home if it were indeed amphibians falling from the sky rather than men, the fact still remains that tadpoles are apparently falling from the skies of Japan.

And I say “skies” because the phenomenon seems to be taking place in multiple cities. On June 4 in one city, Nanao, over 100 dead tadpoles were covering car windshields for 30 meters in a civic center parking lot. Others were found in nearby yards.

Only two days later in another city, Hakusan, more tadpole downpours were reported.

These aren’t, of course, isolated incidents. Small water creatures like frogs, fish and even jellyfish have been known to fall from the sky in what is known as the "Fafrotskies" phenomenon (which literally means “fall from the sky”), coined by cryptozoologist Ivan T. Sanderson. Other Fafrotskies that have been reported include rocks, sheets of ice and even blood and meat all falling from the sky.

While scientists sometimes chalk it up to strong winds or water spouts, which would suck up animals and deposit them miles away, many people aren’t satisfied with that answer.

Japanese meteorologists aren’t buying it, either. They say that there were no strong winds on either of these days.

Now, I have to know—and this is for all of the people out there waiting for the “rapture” who believe in a massive biblical Armageddon—do tadpoles qualify as a plague? Or must they be full-grown frogs?