Oakville Blobs: Acid Rain to Another Level

Rain is very commonplace across most of the world (unless you live in a desert, the Arctic, or somewhere strange otherwise). Normally, it is entirely harmless. If a few drops hit your head or your clothing, it would be considered a minor inconvenience more than anything else. Sometimes, it has the potential to damage electronics or other delicate objects that you might be carrying around outdoors. Usually, though, rain doesn’t make you sick. That is just what happened in Washington state as recently as the 1990s. Large clumps of a mysterious substance poured down, and these Oakville Blobs have remained a mystery ever since.

On August 7, 1994, the town of Oakville, Washington began experiencing a mysterious weather condition. Rain is very normal, but a downpour of goo is not. The citizens of this small town were appalled as a gelatin-like substance started cascading from the skies. They were 

quite small, averaging at about the size of a grain of rice, but they still caused an increase of goop to pour down their windshields and home windows. In a town that experiences the amount of rain Oakville does, receiving about 60 inches of rain per year, the citizens would know if something was amiss.

This phenomenon was not an isolated incident. This type of precipitation occurred five more times across the span of three weeks. Many locals tried to drive, but the goop obscured their vision. Others described it as appearing as hail. The repercussions of this rain were not worrying to the people of Oakville, who believed it was just a freak incident. This was their 

mindset until they began developing symptoms and other unpleasant conditions. The strange indicators that befell the people of Oakville were very similar to that of the flu, and they supposedly came from contact with or even proximity to the globular substance. There were even reports of dead animals sprinkled across the roads in the town. 

Due to the suspicion surrounding the strange appearance of these blobs, samples were collected and sent to the Hazardous Material Unit at the Department of Ecology of Washington State for investigation. After a multitude of tests were carried out, it was determined that two different types of bacteria found in the goo can cause infection to the digestive system. There were also plenty of different types of cells in the mixture, though their identity and purpose remained largely unknown. None of the cells within the blobs had any nuclei, meaning they were not complex.

There are plenty of theories surrounding the origins and true nature of the blobs that fell on Oakville in the summer of 1994. One popular theory was that they were human white blood cells, but the lack of nuclei in the sample disproves this (since white blood cells do have nuclei). Another group believes that they could possibly be jellyfish. There had been bombing missions carried out by the Air Force in the area that were largely harmless, but any jellyfish in the area could have possibly been blown to bits and had their remains scattered throughout the clouds to rain upon Oakville. This is unlikely, though, considering these raids occurred 50 miles away from the town. A final theory suggests that this could potentially be waste from an airplane, but this waste would have been colored blue, which does not match the clear complexion of the Oakville Blobs. 

Many conspiracy theorists like to posit that the blobs did not come from Earth, and were in fact the remnants or products of other-worldly life. While this is more than likely not the case, this is likely not the actual reason behind the blobs. There have been records dating back hundreds of years referring to a mysterious ‘star jelly’ that is found after a meteor shower. The traits exhibited by this substance are apparently very similar to what poured upon Oakville that day. Many of those situations have been debunked and have other explanations, but some still remain unexplained, and Oakville just might be one of them.

Unless these blobs reappear sometime in the future, it is not likely that there will ever be an explanation for them. Their evidence no longer readily exists, and any samples have since been analyzed and destroyed. Unless another town gets Jell-O incessantly rained upon them, Oakville might forever be left in the dark about what exactly fell upon their town in 1994.