It was the kind of day that every cat dreams of. On 29 December 2021, thunderstorms rattled the skies over Texarkana, Texas. Then the heavens opened – and it started raining fish.
Hundreds of little silver fish fell across an area of roughly nine square miles. They landed on roads, lawns and parking lots, garage forecourts and roofs. All of them were dead.
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It wasn’t the first time the sky had rained fish. Accounts of ‘animal rain’ stretch back centuries, with reports of fish, frogs, toads, worms, spiders and even jellyfish falling from above.
Texarkana, however, produced an unusually detailed record of the phenomenon. First-hand accounts and videos flooded social media, while the story made a splash in the news. It was arguably the most documented fish fall in history.
The fish were all gizzard shad, a freshwater species common in Texas. But how did they get into the sky in the first place?
At first, the answer seemed obvious: a waterspout. A common explanation for animal rain is that a whirling column of air and mist can lift small aquatic animals out of the water and carry them into the sky. What goes up must come down – and in this case, it came down all over Texarkana.
But there was a problem: no waterspout was recorded near Texarkana that day.
Investigators considered several possibilities. Perhaps the storm had blown fish out of a nearby pond. Maybe they’d been dropped from an aircraft. But none of it made sense. Then came the clue that changed everything: some of the shad showed signs of being partially digested.
Airport workers who cleared fish from the runways noted that the animals “were kind of chewed up.” Flocks of cormorants had been spotted nearby. These fish-eating birds swallow their prey whole and are known to regurgitate their food when disturbed.
The idea was that the storm had spooked the cormorants, causing them to disgorge their stomach contents over Texarkana. In other words, the fish hadn't been caught up by the storm. They’d been coughed up by cormorants.
It's a compelling explanation, but it remains a theory: nobody actually saw the cormorants regurgitating the fish. Still, the cats of Texarkana were happy to help with the clean-up.
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