You’ve probably never seen a more bizarre weather report than this one.
On August 7, 1994, Oakville, Washington, is struck by a storm unlike any other.
But be patient; this is not your typical rainstorm.
Something else falls from the sky instead of raindrops.
Sunny Barclift, who lives in Oakville, took these pictures of what can only be described as blob rain.
It isn’t water.
It appears that the blobs are made of a translucent, gelatinous substance.
In addition, they are accompanied by dead frogs in some photographs, wait for it.
Can anything be stranger?
It can, yes.
Sunny’s mother gets sick shortly after the blob rain, which prompts Sunny to send a sample of the blobs to Dr. Dave Small.
Furthermore, the lab results only exacerbate the mystery.
Little Dave: The specimen resembled freshly made gelatin.
It was given to our laboratory, where it was examined under a microscope.
However, the equipment in my laboratory was insufficient to determine the precise chemical nature.
Jonathan Harris: Over the course of three weeks, this blob-like rain occurs six times and covers an area of 20 square miles.
It hits people, cars, trees, and grass, among other things.
AMY TEITEL: Within a few days, nausea, vomiting, disorientation, and difficulty thinking were common symptoms.
Although the symptoms persisted for two to three months, it was almost like they had the flu.
Additionally, animals that came into contact with the slime suffered illness and ultimately perished.
Jonathan Harris: However, additional blob testing in the lab does provide a hint.
AMANDA TEITEL: They discovered two extremely harmful strains of bacteria and claimed that the blobs were biological material because they contained cells with nuclei.
One can spoil food, and the other can be found in the intestines of humans.
Jonathan Harris: Therefore, what could have been the reason for such an inexplicable form of precipitation?
AMANDA TEITEL: The Bible frequently discusses storms and rain.
Sometimes it’s a prophecy about something very bad happening.
Ezekiel 38:22, a particular Bible verse, describes a plague of blood brought on by hail and torrents of rain.
Jonathan Harris: This may have been the work of a more earthly power, according to another theory.
AMANDA TEITEL: Some people believed that the weather over the ocean had somehow agitated enough living things, like jellyfish, to shoot them out of the water and up into the clouds, where they could rain back down on people.
However, no one has been able to determine precisely what took place in Oakville.
Prior to the blob storm, residents of Oakville noticed that military aircraft frequently flew overhead.
Many people started to wonder if the US government was involved in anything.
The townspeople were forced to look into alternative explanations because the Air Force denied knowing about the incident.
We have experts who can assist.
We begin by discussing the physicist Matthew Szydagis.
Is it possible that these jellyfish were accidentally brought to land?
Matthew Szydag: The ocean is not too far from Oakville.
It’s possible that some oceanic material was picked up by a waterspout and deposited as precipitation.
Jonathan Harris: Waterspouts are vortices that look like tornadoes and form over water bodies.
They might be able to bring sea creatures like jellyfish ashore in theory, but the evidence doesn’t support that.
Matthew Szydag: The fact that no jellyfish fragments were discovered would not explain why the specific cells and bacteria were found in the blobs.
Jonathan Harris: OK.
Now for a more bizarre theory that might explain the human gut bacteria in the blobs.
Could it be from the restroom on an airplane?
Don’t believe it hasn’t occurred.
As an airplane approached Heathrow Airport in 2021, a man standing in his garden in Windsor, England, was accidentally covered in human waste.
However, the evidence in Oakville does not support that theory.
Matthew Szydag: The FAA has vehemently denied the existence of human waste from airplanes.
Additionally, the waste system fluid will have a bluish hue for airlines.
Jonathan Harris: Although blue dye is frequently added to airplane toilets as a disinfectant, the Oakville blobs did not contain any blue.
Matthew Szydag: In the pictures, you saw white.
Therefore, in addition to being illegal and unethical, it is the wrong color.
Jonathan Harris: So, could this be a weather-related occurrence?
Juan Hernandez, a meteorologist, says it’s not exactly, but he thinks it’s related.
Juan Herrera: Star jelly was the name given to this substance prior to any research on it.
There is always some kind of jelly that is attached to the eggs of a toad or frog when they are eaten by any animal.
Jonathan Harris: Moisture is the next piece of the puzzle.
The jelly that is attached to the eggs expands when there is sufficient rainfall.
Juan Herrera: In this particular location, there was about a quarter of an inch of rain.
The jelly should be able to expand with just a quarter of an inch of rain.
Jonathan Harris: Therefore, it is proposed that animals consumed frog eggs, vomited them out, and the rain expanded them.
Szydagis isn’t sold, even though that would explain the frogs.
Matthew Szydag: We have numerous witnesses, some of whom are credible, such as Oakville police officers, who claim that the rain fell from the sky and struck their windshields.
Szydagis also points out that the human connection in the samples cannot be explained by frogs.
Matthew Szydag: Additionally, I would like to know how animals take in human gut bacteria.
If that were the case, then how is it possible to infect so many animals at once and in the same location?
Our conclusion: an unknown living thing.
We looked into theories like jellyfish, star jelly, and airplane waste, but none of them explained what witnesses saw coming out of the sky directly.
