INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Tiny Spiders Rain Down In Australia

By Tara Dodrill
Published on: 02:05 PST, May 19, 2015

The spider rain in Australia has been deemed a natural phenomenon by some and the “stuff nightmares are made of” by those actually living in the southern Tabelands region of the nation. Baby spiders and their webs appear to be falling from the sky. The spider rain looks like angel hair when it lands on crops, homes, the ground, basically anything at or near ground level, witnesses have said.

“It’s raining spiders” is not a phrase that anyone likely ever thought that they would be shouting. Tabelands region residents said the spider rain also makes it look like it is snowing outside.

“What happens is that during a particular time of the year, particularly in May and August, young spiders in the Outback somewhere throw these threads of spider webs up in the air and use them as a parachute to detach themselves from the ground and move in large colonies through the sky,” local resident Keith Basterfield said.

The spider rain has also jokingly been called the Australian version of a “Sharknado.”

“We see these vast areas of baby spiders, all coming down at once in the late morning or early afternoon. It tends to happen a couple of times per year, usually on clear days with slight winds. I was on the Bureau of Meteorology last week and watching the weather for Golburn and the conditions were just right,” Basterfield added.

Basterfield has been collecting spider rain since 2001. He encouraged others in the Tabelands, Autralia region who has also witnessed baby spiders falling from the sky to contact him and share their experience and photos with him to further his personal research.

“Anyone else experiencing this ‘Angel Hair’ or maybe aka millions of spiders falling from the sky right now? I’m 10 minutes out of town and you can clearly see hundreds of little spiders floating along with their webs and my home is covered in them. Someone call a scientist,” an Australian man who was also startled by the raining spiders phenomenon, posted on Facebook. “If you look toward the sun there are millions of them and really high up here, like over 100m or more up, there is also a cotton like substance coming down that is kinda like spider web but not exactly.”

The “flying spider” phenomenon, or spider rain involves spiders ballooning or being cast out a dragline of silk thread that gets carried by the wind, according to a Live Science report. “The wind and sunshine provide the needed updrafts that allow the spiders and their webs to go airborne,” the report also noted.

“The whole place was covered in these little black spiderlings and when I looked up at the sun it was like this tunnel of webs going up for a couple of hundred meters into the sky,” Ian Watson of the Golburn area, stated during an interview with the the Sydney Morning Herald.

What do you think about the spider rain? Would you be startled if someone told you “it’s raining spiders” outside?

[Image via: Shutterstock.com]

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