Lizards After the Rain? Gibb’s Leroy Report

Transcript

Here is a curious report from Leroy, New York, as recorded by Sir George Duncan Gibb in Odd Showers. A notice appeared in the Montreal Weekly Gazette on December twenty-eighth, eighteen fifty-seven. It described live lizards falling during heavy rain on “Sunday night last.” Some were said to be about four inches long, then crawling along the sidewalks and streets. The notice does not tell us the exact date of that Sunday night, or name any individual witnesses. Gibb offers a possible explanation, not a confirmed cause: if the account is reliable, he suggests the animals may have been water newts lifted from nearby waters by a land waterspout, or perhaps carried by a hurricane. His own caution matters: “If this account is reliable.” This is a historical report, not proof of how a modern storm can move animals.