Stunned family discover waterspout dumped hundreds of fish on their garden

By Lauren Beavis via SWNS

A stunned family discovered a rare waterspout dumped hundreds of SPRAT fish on their front garden.

Hilly and John Boutloup were shocked one night to find a couple of small fish on their balcony.

They iniitally dismissed it and blamed a seagull - but the next morning discovered fish everywhere around their property.

Experts on the Channel Island of Jersey where they live say the fish were picked up by a waterspout at sea - then dumped on their home.

Watersprouts are essentially mini-tornados, which take up water vapour from the sea and transport it into the clouds.

The Bouteloup's house is about 50 meters from the ocean so they get a lot of strong winds from storms.

"We get a lot of gulls in the area, and so did not think anything of it," John said.

''The next morning we woke up to our daughter asking 'what are all these fish doing?'

''When there is a storm you can see the double-glazed windows flex.

''The watersprouts must have hit the corner of our house, created a whirlwind and dropped the fish right outside.

''This is very unusual event. Phenomenal really. I have never seen this before in all my years living by the sea."

John posted a video of the strange sight on his Facebook.

His friend John Searson, Jersey’s meterological officer enlisted Jersey’s Marine Resources, Paul Chambers, to identify the fish as sprats.

Senior met forecaster Rob Plummer wrote about the strange event on the government’s blog.

It stated: "In the case of the Bouteloups’ garden, there was no wind damage to be seen and, funnily enough, no fish were found in the neighboring property, so it really would have been very easy to dismiss the event as nothing but a prank.

''However, these extra details all tie together nicely when you observe and consider the photos of 2 November’s waterspouts.

'‘The waterspouts can be seen to lean at quite an angle, something close to 45 degrees.

''This means that if a shoal of fish were sucked up to a great height then we would actually expect them to fall many hundreds of meters away from their source.

''Therefore it’s entirely reasonable to receive a localised splattering of sprats, without feeling any of the extreme winds that would have been at the waterspout’s base.''