Why Do Insects And Spiders Sometimes Rain Down From The Sky?

Some people hate rainfall, while others cannot get enough of it, especially when the rain is accompanied by thunder. However, you will not find many people who claim to enjoy showers of insects and spiders. Although it may sound absurd, insects and spiders have rained down from the sky in various locations all over the world, even in the United States. These arthropod showers are never predicted by meteorologists, although enormous swarms of insects have been spotted on weather radar. In fact, these strange incidents cannot always be explained away with certainty by experts. You may think that inexplicable storms of insects and spiders are incredibly rare, but think again. Only two years ago, mysterious insects rained down from the sky in Colorado, and spiders sometimes rain down on the people of Brazil. Considering that, in some insect-heavy regions, up to six billion individual insects fly over people’s heads in just one month’s time, maybe it should not come as a shock that insects sometimes fall from the sky.

During the month of June in 2016, residents living in parts of Brighton, Colorado became overwhelmed by mysterious maggot-like insects that had been falling from the sky. The amount of insects that rained from the sky were numerous enough to completely obscure sidewalks. Many of the insects were dead by the time they hit the ground, but many were not, which made the ground appear as though it had been pulsating. The origin and identity of the insects were never conclusively determined, but one entomologist claimed that the insects were likely fly larvae that had been blow off of tree canopies as a result of rain and heavy winds. This is the same explanation that experts have provided to explain odd spider-showers that sometimes occur over areas of Brazil. One Brazilian, Erik Reis, posted a video to Youtube that shows massive amounts of spiders falling over Sao Paulo. The species of spider shown in the video is Anelosimus eximius, and they are well known for spending most of their time in trees. Heavy winds often blow these spiders, along with their webs, off of the canopies and into populated areas. These spiders can inhabit trees that are located high up within mountainous regions, so the origin of these raining spiders may seem mysterious to the people that witness them.

Would you respond with panic if spiders or insects started to rain from the sky where you live?