something like this is what started that whole "burning hail" story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFv2W7Duqiw#t=0m50s
-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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Am 19.05.2010 00:39, schrieb Darren New:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFv2W7Duqiw#t=0m50s

One of those moments you absolutely, positively, do /not/ want to be 
outside in the open...!

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> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFv2W7Duqiw#t=0m50s

Very impressive - or rather terrible if you happen to be caught in it. 
Imagine you newly bought car parked in the open in wether like this - ouch.

However, without any hard evidence, I suppose that the origin of the saying 
is much less spectacular. Probably a small whirlwind once did pick up a fire 
and deposited the burning embers somewhere else...

No kidding here: the stories about rains of fish and frogs did originate 
exactly this way. A whirlwind passes over water, picks up water+fish, drops 
it nearby. If people are present, obviously a miracle did happen. Same with 
frogs: driven out by rain, picked up and deposited again after the whirlwind 
exhausts itself. When this happens with parts of roofs, tiles or tree limbs 
nobody thinks it odd. When it happens with living creatures a miracle must 
have happended ;-)

Off-off topic: what do you English speakers call a whirlwird over water? I 
just read you call it a waterspout - I always though this was the name of a 
tap.

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TC wrote:
> just read you call it a waterspout - I always though this was the name of a 
> tap. 

A waterspout, or in America at least a typhoon, because American english not 
only borrows words from other languages, it goes out and mugs them in dark 
alleys.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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