Residents in parts of Southern Australia reportedly received a horrifying rain storm, but it was not water droplets that hit the surface. It was millions of baby spiders.
A Goulburn resident, Ian Watson, took to the Goulburn Community Facebook page May 11 to report the arachnophobe’s nightmare, according to ABC7. He asked if anyone else was experiencing “millions of spiders falling from the sky.”
Watson said “the whole place” was masked by “little black spiderlings.” When he looked into the sky it was “like this tunnel of webs going up a couple of hundred meters,” Watson said.
He claimed that his house looked like it had been abandoned and “taken over by spiders,” as reported by Washington Post. He added that he was frustrated that spiders kept getting caught in his beard.
Watson wrote that someone should “call a scientist.” If someone had, a scientist would tell Watson that the event was not unprecedented. This has reportedly happened in places such as Texas, Brazil and a nearby Australian town Wagga Wagga.
Typically, spiders rain from the sky when sizable groups of arachnids migrate together using a technique called “ballooning.” According to Naturalist Martyn Robinson from the Australian Museum, it is common for spiders who are limited by their small size. The spiders lounge on vegetation and release a stream of silk that floats them up to 3 kilometers high.
Robinson said that spiders can “literally travel for kilometers.” This is the reason why spiders show up on every continent.
When the spiders land, their silk balloons often end up hanging on the landscape. This is referred to as “angel hair.”
In order for spiders to successfully “balloon,” they need the right weather conditions. An Australian resident, Keith Basterfield, said that this usually happens once or twice a year “on clear days with slight winds,” as reported by Science Times.
Mike Draney, an arachnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, also said that weather plays a big role.
Draney told ABC News that “It can’t be too windy and there needs to be warm rising air currents.”
