On Saturday, April 12, 2014, a strange tornado swept over Smithfield, New South Wales. Its strangeness lies in the fact that the tornado left behind pieces of a mysterious substance.
According to the News website, on Saturday, a resident of the Australian suburb of Smithfield, located in New South Wales, sat on a veranda and watched the rain when the wind suddenly intensified, foreshadowing, according to the man, a tornado.
“As the wind picked up, I knew what was coming,” says Peter Burgess. - It just reminded me of the tornado in Sydney (in December 2005) and what is happening in Queensland in 2013, which was hit by the cyclone "Oswald". I heard an incredibly loud noise, as if a jet-powered plane had landed nearby, and immediately ran into the house."
The Australian stayed in the cottage until the wind died down, and then went out into the yard to assess possible damage.
“It really was a tornado, but rather a mini - tornado raged for several minutes. Despite this, traces of his activity stretched for 200 meters: branches and uprooted small trees were scattered everywhere. I was examining the fallen trees when I noticed translucent drops resembling lumps of mucus on a pile of chips,”Burgess described his find.
The discovered substance intrigued the man so much that he photographed it and sent the resulting pictures to experts from James Cook University, adding that the clots are very similar to jellyfish. Jamie Seymour, a leading specialist at the Australian University, answered him.
Promotional video:
He doubted the version with the inhabitants of the ocean and noted that he could not identify the creature or substance captured by the Australian. It is noteworthy that forecasters were also perplexed by Burgess's message about a mysterious jellyfish tornado.
“We have no official record of the tornado that hit the Smithfield suburb on Saturday, but theoretically it is possible,” Robin Nataniela of the Bureau of Meteorology, responsible for weather forecasting and hazard warnings in Australia, told reporters. "It could very well have been a tornado or a funnel-shaped cloud."
What was it?
In February 2013, a similar mysterious jelly-like substance was discovered in the Ham Wall nature reserve in the English county of Somerset. Locals claim that she came from space. According to folklore, a similar slime called "star jelly" has appeared more than once after meteor showers. This time, visitors to the reserve stumbled upon the "jelly" three days after the fall of the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
Representative of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Tony Whitehead, commented on the find as follows: “Although we do not know what it is, but descriptions of similar phenomena have been encountered before. In the 14th century they were called "star jelly". In folklore, it is mentioned that "jellies" always appeared after "star showers".
Visitors to the reserve are warned not to touch the jelly-like substance - for the last couple of days, people continue to find "star jellies" in different parts of the reserve, always on the grass and quite far from the water. The diameter of each "jelly" is about 10 cm.
The opinions of scientists are divided: some say that this is most likely one of the types of blue-green algae, others believe that the substance is the result of the regurgitation of one of the amphibians, and still others that it has to do with a fungus with the intriguing name "pearl trembling".