2017, May 16: Fish Fall in Oroville

An early report on May 18, 2017, from the Action News Now website stated that on the previous Tuesday morning, May 16, students and teachers arrived to Stanford Elementary School in Oroville, California, to what was initially thought to be a prank. The school's grounds and roof, you see, were dotted with hundreds of tiny fish. But then it started to rain during classes and recess... and more fish fell from the sky.

Some of the Oroville fish [Larger version here]

        The theory put forward by the reporter of the matter was that it was likely caused by a water spout that gathered tiny fish and later dropped them. At the time of this first reporting, no official explanation had been released yet... possibly because if a water spout picked up all the fish, it would still be very hard to explain why the creatures all fell at different times, yet at the same place.

        Nine and a half hours later, Action News Now released a very different report about the matter, having sent a reporter to the school itself to ask questions. The revised report stated that fish were only found once, around noon when students went out to recess... and that there were only about 100 fish in total. The school janitor did confirm that some of the fish were on the roof of the school, so they appeared to have fallen from the sky; but no one actually saw them falling. If true, this occurence could be caused by a waterspout, because the fish appear to have only fallen once.

        Luckily, the school is in the same state as me, and I'm nosy... so I just called them mid-day and asked which of the two reports was the correct one. The second report is, so the event is far less weird than initially reported; but many of the kids still had a hard time convincing their parents it actually happened until the news reports were released!