Fish rain falls annually in a small settlement of Honduras

Every year in Yoro, a small town in the north of Honduras, a mysterious phenomenon occurs that no one can really explain. Locals call it literally "Lluvia de Peces" — "Fish rain".

The phenomenon of fish showers (as well as showers of frogs and other small animals) has been recorded in many places around the world for many years, but Yoro in Honduras claims that this is the only place on the planet where this phenomenon occurs every year. and sometimes several times a year.

Usually fish rain in Yoro falls from May to June, usually after a very strong storm. At the same time, which is strange, there has not yet been a single person who has seen with his own eyes how a fish falls from the sky.

It is said that this happens because fish fall mostly at night, and also because it happens after storms when people are afraid to leave the house. When the storm ends, they go outside and see hundreds and hundreds of scattered fish near their homes.

There are so many fish that it is difficult to explain it by someone's constant jokes or an accident with a truck transporting fish. So Yolo's fish shower can't just be called an urban legend or "fake news."

According to local residents, there is a legend that it began in the 1850s or 1960s, when the Spanish missionary Jose Manuel Subiran came to the area. Seeing the locals suffering from hunger due to problems with the harvest, he prayed to God for three days and three nights, asking him to provide people with food.

And after the third night, the sky darkened, and then a fish fell from there. And since then, as locals assure, such wonderful rains have become an annual phenomenon here.

"This is a secret that only the Lord knows. This great blessing comes to us from heaven," says a local pastor.

People collect fallen fish and eat it. The fish that falls out is usually small and fresh. And in recent years, it has fallen only in one special place — in a pasture in the small community of La Union.

For locals, this fish is most often the only opportunity to eat seafood. This part of Honduras is populated by farmers, among whom poverty is widespread, there is little work, large families huddle in primitive adobe houses, and food often consists only of crops grown by local residents — mainly corn and beans.

Water tornadoes

"It's a miracle," explains Lucio Perez, 45, who has lived in the La Union community for 17 years. "We see this as a blessing from God." 

Mr. Peres has heard various scientific theories about this phenomenon. Each of them, according to him, is riddled with uncertainty.

"No, no, there's no explanation for that," he says, shaking his head. "Here in Yoro, they say that this fish was sent by the hand of God."

According to residents, this phenomenon has been happening in the city and its surroundings for at least the last few generations, changing location from time to time.

He migrated to La Union about ten years ago.

"No one in the world thinks it can rain fish," says Catalina Garay, 75, who, together with her husband, Esteban Lazaro, 77, raised nine children in their adobe house in La Uniona. — It's actually raining fish.

More educated residents believe that fish does not necessarily fall from the sky, but can live in some underground streams or caves, from which it is washed out after heavy rains and storms.

There is also a theory that water tornadoes suck fish from nearby waters — perhaps even from the Atlantic Ocean, located about 45 miles from Yoro — and dump it into Yoro. But this hypothesis does not explain how tornadoes regularly dump fish directly on the same pasture from year to year.