"OCEAN SPRINGS - Something fishy happened during the hailstorm
that pounded the city Tuesday evening.
Gulf Islands National Seashore Ranger Melissa Perez and volunteer
Adam Wilson were pelted briefly with small, very cold fish while on
the park's pier.
It was around 6 p.m. Tuesday when the storm had eased briefly. The
two ran out to try and locate minnow traps that had been left on
the pier.
The traps were gone, but while Perez and Wilson were looking,
something began falling into the water near them causing splashes.
Then two icy cold fish hit the deck of the pier and one hit Perez's
hat.
"I was pretty upset that I had lost those traps, when fish fell
from the sky," Perez said.
"We went for cover. One was incredibly cold and one of them
actually was icy," she said. Fellow workers told her it was a rare
phenomenon.
"But sure enough, it happened here," she said.
Perez didn't know how many fell into the water; the event took her
by surprise. But it all happened in an area that had roughly a
20-foot diameter.
The fish that hit the deck were small, about 3 inches long, and she
said that she didn't immediately recognize the species.
"The weather was so bad that we threw them off and ran for cover,"
she said.
Todd Adams, assistant coordinator of educational programs at J.S.
Scott Marine Education Center, has a degree in physical geography
and a master's in geo-science.
He ventured two possibilities: The storm could have pulled the
small fish into the thundercloud where they were coated with ice
until they got heavy enough to fall from the cloud or the storm
could have sucked them off a fishing boat and dropped them at the
park.
"Obviously there was hail," Adams said. "And a water spout will
pull up and throw all types of things."
Adams, like other motorists Tuesday in Ocean Springs, experienced
the storm along U.S. 90. He said the wind was blowing in one
direction and then another, in a vortex action.
Debbie Anglin, another Ocean Springs resident, said she waited out
what she thought was the worst of the storm at a church downtown.
She left and encountered hail on Government Street near the high
school at around 6 p.m., about the time the fish were falling a
couple of miles east.
She said motorists were pulling over at Oak Park Elementary and at
a service station on Halstead Road, where there was
protection.
"I went creeping along," she said. "The hail that hit me was bigger
than marbles, bouncing off the hood and hitting the
windshield."
She said it sounded like rocks hitting her car.
Police Chief Kerry Belk said his department on Wednesday assessed
and repaired damaged to its phone system, which was struck by
lightning during the storm and went out for several minutes on
Tuesday.
An awning from The 19th Hole driving range on U.S. 90 blew off and
hit a mobile home in an RV park next door, he said, and there was
flash flooding in several neighborhoods, including Woodhaven.
"It was a very bad storm and a very dangerous storm," Belk said.
"We're thankful that there wasn't more damage throughout the
city."