Nature at Its Funniest!: It’s Raining Apples in England

In England, we are familiar with the well-hackneyed phrase, ‘it is raining cats and dogs’ – when it is raining very heavily, of course. The mystery surrounding the origin of the phrase deepened further on Monday evening, when the residents of Coventry, a metropolitan borough in England, witnessed the ‘fruity’ equivalent of the phenomenon, much to the amazement of the folks in the city and beyond its borders.

According to an eye witness, a local parish councillor, it was the second event of that kind. She went on to say that despite no reported personal injuries from falling apples, there were cars which had been damaged by the impact. A local resident had noticed dozens of apples in his back garden, coming from nowhere.

People noticed that apples had been scattered around the roads around the
Junction of Kelmscote Road. The extent of the damage to the apples, according to residents, implies the fall from a considerable height, which in turn ruled out the foul play or a ‘sweet’ act of vandalism.

As the car owners, whose bonnets had been battered by the apples, were scratching their heads to understand the phenomenon, physicists did come forward in droves to shed some ‘light’ on the incident.

According to a Cambridge scientist, it was the work of a tornado: “Cars and houses have been swept up by tornadoes, so apples are well within the realms of possibility,” said Dr Lisa Jardine-Wright, while expressing her opinion. Not surprisingly, she said that more experiments were needed to determine the source of the apples, the force of impact and the height which they started falling from.

However, her hypothesis was dealt a serious blow, when both the British Met Office and BBC Weather Centre made it clear that there were no tornadoes in the area in question, on Monday evening. On the contrary, the weather was really calm in the region.

According to the seasoned weathermen in the area, even if there were tornadoes in the area, they were always moderate; so they were not capable of scattering things beyond a few meters from where the items had been picked up. In these circumstances, he says, a box of apples or a vineyard must be in the vicinity, providing the source of the apples. Unfortunately, there was no evidence for the presence of either in the area where the apples started raining down.

If tornado hypothesis is true, it just doesn’t solve the mystery. On the contrary, it adds another inexplicable dimension to the event. If tornado turns out to be the ‘culprit’, it shows clearly that tornadoes have begun emulating human beings – a very worrying development, indeed; because, they have shown the signs of committing blatant discrimination against other fruits – stirring up another front for debate: they seemed to have lifted up apples while ignoring pears, grapes, strawberries etc, perhaps, on a very ‘sour’ note.

As the tornado-hypothesis failed to gain momentum, a second hypothesis came from some ordinary folks. They were of the view that the apples may have fallen from a passing aeroplane. Since throwing-out apples from a moving plane is tantamount to collective suicide on mass scale, that idea too faded into the oblivion - in the absence of any news about a passenger being charged with attempted mass murder.

With no clear explanation in the pipeline, the incident slowly crawled into the realm of the inexplicable by the weekend. In the not-too-distant past, there were reports of rain of frogs, fish, and even maggots, which clearly defied science and amplified superstition.

When the events of this kind come about, it is normal and natural that experts come up with their own rationale to appease a bewildered audience. In this context, the speed at which the theories surfaced after the event in Coventry is not surprising.

However, the failure to keep an open mind about a baffling phenomenon, has the potential to tarnish the reputation of the very experts beyond repair in the long run, as we are witnessing similar things in many other fields at present.

Therefore, if those who seek answers for a freaky event don’t get what they are looking for, they may be tempted to borrow another well-known English phrase at the earliest opportunity, just to mock the experts: “Send them to Coventry,” they may yell, in order to vent out frustration.

- Asian Tribune -