Field Report Archive

Evidence Locker

3 inspectable evidence items. Claims and source findings are kept separate.

Documented Timeline

• 1876-03-03: The Kentucky Meat Shower occurs in Bath County, Kentucky, where chunks of flesh fall from a clear sky over a farm.
• 1882-06-16: A severe hailstorm in Dubuque, Iowa, is reported to have dropped living frogs encased in ice, documented in the Monthly Weather Review.
• 1917-05: Waldo L. McAtee publishes a systematic scientific review of organic falls, Showers of Organic Matter, in the Monthly Weather Review.
• 1919: Charles Fort publishes The Book of the Damned, compiling hundreds of reports of anomalous falls and proposing his thesis of excluded phenomena.

Named Participants and Roles

• Charles Fort: Skeptical researcher who compiled the reports of anomalous falls from scientific and press archives.
• Foreman of the Novelty Iron Works: Reported finding living frogs inside melting hailstones during the 1882 Dubuque storm.
• Waldo L. McAtee: U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey biologist who investigated the transport of organic materials by storms.
• Mrs. Allen Crouch: Primary witness of the 1876 Kentucky Meat Shower on her farm.

Contradictions and Record Conflicts

• Witnesses in Dubuque claimed frogs fell inside solid hailstones, whereas editors suggested frogs were already on the ground or became quickly encased.
• Charles Fort presented falls as evidence of a super-Sargasso sea or anomalous forces, while meteorologists demonstrated transport via waterspouts and whirlwinds.
• Reports of red rain were historically viewed as blood or anomalous portents, but scientific analysis identified the color as desert sand or dust.

Conventional Explanations

• Strong updrafts, whirlwinds, or waterspouts can lift aquatic life and debris from shallow water and carry them several miles before depositing them.
• Red rain or blood rain is conventionally explained by high-altitude winds transporting red desert dust (e.g., from the Sahara) and mixing it with rain.
• Vultures regurgitating stomach contents when startled or taking flight is the leading scientific explanation for the Kentucky Meat Shower.

Missing Evidence

• Lack of preserved physical samples of the hailstones containing frogs from the 1882 Dubuque storm.
• Absence of contemporaneous meteorological radar or high-resolution wind data to verify updraft velocities during the historical falls.
• Limited physical tissue samples surviving from the 1876 Kentucky Meat Shower to perform modern DNA sequencing.

What Remains Unresolved

• The maximum size and weight of objects that can be transported by waterspouts remain a subject of active research.
• Contradictory microscopic analyses of the Kentucky meat samples left the exact biological source of the tissue unresolved.
• The exact mechanism by which delicate organisms like frogs could survive high-altitude transport and freezing temperatures remains unexplained.

Investigative Hypotheses

Open Questions

Archival Landing Pages and Evidence Corpus

Media Context