US: Earthworm Plague Sweeps Cincinnati

[Don Genaro]

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/229523-US-Earthworm-Plague-Sweeps-Cincinnati

This one caught my attention. People in the state of Cincinnati woke up to the sight of thousands of dead earthworms lying everywhere. A local entomologist said it was probably the rain, the mating season or acidic soils that were causing all the earthworms to surface. Well, isn't there rain and a mating season every year along with acidic soils? What it reminded me of was a podcast by James McCanney (can't remember which one) but he was talking about plagues in the bible and ancient myths and how all these insects had "appeared" because electrical charges had "brought them out of hiding," so to speak. As an analogy he said that many of us would understand this if we had ever placed a couple of wires into some wet ground and connected them to a car battery and then gone out on the following morning to find a plentiful supply of earthworms for our fishing trip! The fact that the earthworms were dead suggests to me a charge somewhat stronger than a car battery...

 

[Laura]

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/229523-US-Earthworm-Plague-Sweeps-Cincinnati

This one caught my attention. People in the state of Cincinnati woke up to the sight of thousands of dead earthworms lying everywhere. A local entomologist said it was probably the rain, the mating season or acidic soils that were causing all the earthworms to surface. Well, isn't there rain and a mating season every year along with acidic soils? What it reminded me of was a podcast by James McCanney (can't remember which one) but he was talking about plagues in the bible and ancient myths and how all these insects had "appeared" because electrical charges had "brought them out of hiding," so to speak. As an analogy he said that many of us would understand this if we had ever placed a couple of wires into some wet ground and connected them to a car battery and then gone out on the following morning to find a plentiful supply of earthworms for our fishing trip! The fact that the earthworms were dead suggests to me a charge somewhat stronger than a car battery...

That is totally creepy and your speculations sound reasonable to me! And maybe some insects are induced to breed like crazy in the same environment?

 

[anart]

It's also reminiscent of Velikovsky's 'Worlds in Collision' where he relays reports of all sorts of 'vile creatures coming out from the earth', during the comet encounter.

 

[Bim]

It's funny that i find this thread, because lately in my house centipedes (we call them cienpies in spanish) have been showing up a lot more than normal. In the past week i've found three dead ones inside the toilet and some weeks ago one showed up in my bed (walked all over my arm while i was sleeping would be a more precise description :O). They're not dead, but it's strange because i havent seen anything like this before, and they also have been showing up in my sister's house.

Ants have also been going nuts here, walking around in the hundreds all over the house. So i dunno, something strange is definitely going on in my opinion that has the little critters going hyper (i live in the Dominican Republic, btw).

 

[mamadrama]

I've been under siege lately by ants at my house, too. Seemingly out of nowhere all of a sudden armies of ants have appeared in three separate areas of my house.

 

[Don Genaro]

It gives us a new way of interpreting the plagues of locusts in the bible. Also as I remember in the podcast he suggested the same would be true of vermin which led me to think that maybe that was the element of truth in the "rats caused the black death" idea. Maybe there were indeed plagues of rats coming out of their usual hiding places due to electrical phenomena?

 

[ocean59]

I was born and raised in Cincinnati, and this has been happening since I was a small child. I never really thought it odd, and am not sure why they are suddenly making a big deal out of it, as if it has never happened before. Perhaps the scale has increased?

Basically what happens is this: during a big rain, worms (yes, always thousands of them) come out of the earth and crawl onto rain soaked driveways and sidewalks. They continue crawling around, having a good time, until of course the rain stops. Once the rain dries, any worms still left on the pavement can no longer survive the dry rock, and they shrivel up and die. It is gross, but it has been happening for the entire 30 years I've been alive, and is by no means whatsoever a 'plague' or even slightly newsworthy as far as I can tell.

I just always made sure not to walk barefoot the day of or after big rains when I lived there. :)

 

[Gonzo]

We've been seeing massive any colonies in our yard this spring. Usually, there might be the odd single ant hill, around 3 inches wide at the base maximum. This spring, I found 2 round patches, 2-3 feet wide, with ants all over the place. The grass was completely missing (under the dirt, I imagine).

The worms remind me of the story last April on SotT:
Scotland: Never Mind Cats and Dogs - School Hit by Worm Rain
(http://www.sott.net/articles/show/226884-Scotland-Never-Mind-Cats-and-Dogs-School-Hit-by-Worm-Rain). After reading that story I wondered if it offered plausible explanations for some of the biblical plagues.

Gonzo

 

[anart]

We've been seeing massive any colonies in our yard this spring. Usually, there might be the odd single ant hill, around 3 inches wide at the base maximum. This spring, I found 2 round patches, 2-3 feet wide, with ants all over the place. The grass was completely missing (under the dirt, I imagine).

I'm having the same issue here with ants this year -they're everywhere outside!

 

[ocean59]

Hmm, after reading the newer article posted today http://www.sott.net/articles/show/229813-Untold-Thousands-of-Dead-Worms-Plague-Ohio I decided to dig a little deeper.

I went to Weather Underground's site and pulled up the historical weather data for the affected regions for these dates. Here is what I found:

The worms began appearing en masse June 2 and 3.

Cleveland: last rainfall May 25-26.
Dayton: last rainfall May 27-28.
Cincinnati: last rainfall May 26-27
Louisville: last rainfall May 25-26.

So, I'm not sure why they ever even considered attributing the event to the rain, as this clearly happened under very dry conditions, 5-7 days after the last rainfall. And that rain was not even very heavy, being from .4 inches to a little over an inch in 2 days time.

As such, I just wanted to mention I no longer find it normal as I wrote above. I assumed it had actually been raining (and heavily), as the article suggested.

 

[Mr. Premise]

Well Cincinnati did have about a month straight of rain in May, so if they had 4 weeks or rain then dry conditions maybe the worms are surfacing wondering where the rain went!

 

[RyanX]

The worms began appearing en masse June 2 and 3.

June 2nd there was a New Moon, fwiw.

 

[ocean59]

OK, I decided to try and figure out as much as I could about this, just for fun, as well as the pursuit of truth. Here's what I came up with:

The MSNBC and Modern Survival articles both seem to be based solely off of the local Cincinnati TV station WLWT's coverage of the event. Both paraphrase and selectively choose information provided in that original article. I searched the other 3 Cinci TV station's websites, and it does not appear they covered the story in any way.

Here is the link to the original article that the two subsequent articles posted on SOTT are based on: _http://www.wlwt.com/news/28112081/detail.html

There is also a video embedded within where the 'expert' attempts (very non-convincingly IMO) to 'explain' that because only 3 possibilities exist (rain, acidity, and mating season), and 2 can be eliminated (rain and acidity); that they simply must have been mating, and there is no other explanation. Ah, the dangers of love.

Of course, that is silly - this would happen every year if that was normal behavior, osit. And I've never heard of earthworms coming out of the ground when there had been no rain for the last week. I vividly remember the great flood of 1997 when 17 inches of rain fell in 2 days. It was then dry for weeks - and there was certainly no incident like this that occurred.

Portions of the articles seem to be based on Facebook comments/reports left on their official page, so I took a look at what everyone was saying since I'm not currently in Cincinnati. Here are some of the more interesting comments (emphasis mine) from _https://www.facebook.com/wlwt5/posts/149253645146573

I work at Citi in Florence [15 miles south on Cinci] & noticed them all over the sidewalk when I went in this morning!

Gale Sipple This happened in my neighborhood a couple of years ago..worms everywhere..in the street, all over everyone's driveways and sidewalks..weird.

I'm Wondering about an electrical shock driving them out of the ground and on the cement where there is no current !! has any one checked that possibility ??

Why arent the birds eating them?

(note: the video in the original article shows a close up of a robin picking them up and dropping them, as if it is hungry but won't eat the worms)

They are everywhere here in Amelia [25 miles east of Cinci], too. This is definitely not the normal post-rain worm deal, I've never seen this many worms come up and die.

I don't think it was the rain either, no rain all week here. The ground is dryer now than it has been for months! I wondered about electricity myself when it happened at my house

Here in Middletown [45 miles north of Cinci] at Jacot Park while I was walking the trail I noticed the worms all over (i'm talking the whole trail was completely covered) all dead. I think it's strange...

The only other article I could find, was also on WLWT's site, earlier in the day: a :45 second video, pre-explanation _http://www.wlwt.com/video/28108271/detail.html . The FB comments triggered from that earlier posting are what inspired (I assume) the later, more in-depth coverage. Just a few of the ~150 comments from the FB on that initial early morning video before the 'mating season' explanation was found later in the evening:

_https://www.facebook.com/wlwt5/posts/167531053310161

They're all over in Liberty Twp [25 miles north of Cinci] in our driveway/street area. I'm guessing it's due to all the rain we had kept them near the surface for a long time and now the heat has killed them off. But, the sudden appearance is kinda weird!

UC Clermont [25 miles NE of Cinci] was COVERED in them. Totally gross!!!

Approx. 50 or so are dead on our back patio this morning in Florence [South of Cinci]. There were tons of them crawling all over last night. Weird.

I live in the Independence/Morning View area and I noticed all of the dead worms on my long driveway when I went to walk my neighbor's dog this morning. Seeing dead worms on my driveway isn't anything new, but I've never seen it occur when it hasn't rained. Usually it happens after a rain.

Dead birds, bats, fish, now worms? hmmmm.......

Like Heather said, they are all over in Maineville too! I noticed HUNDREDS of them while out running last night. Not to mention a couple of dead bees too - which I thought was strange.

I took a walk this morning and was shocked by the amount of dead worms in Amelia.Didn't understand it...

Just a thought... all of the radiation released into the air from the nuclear plant in Japan + massive amounts of rain around here lately=contaminated soil?

Yes! I noticed it yesterday all along my culdesac sidewalk in Burlington, KY. I thought it was so strange.

We just heard from our sister station in Louisville. They're seeing the same thing.

My best guess would be radiation also.

Only on one side of my driveway has dead worms, and that is part that gets rain coming down from the hillside in Ft. Thomas.

Worms instinctively come out the ground in large numbers in response to vibration, such as that which is caused by a heavy rain. This prevents them from drowning. Other things can cause these vibrations however and the worms cannot always tell the difference. Something of this sort is the likely cause.

Vibration? Maybe an earthquake is on it's way.

None in Anderson Twp., at least in the 5 Mile Road area...but we did have a flowering tree leaf out normally this spring, and 3 days ago suddenly died, every leaf is brownish and so dry they crumble in your hand.

To much rain kills worms. Hello people get out the farmer's almanac. LOL

I USE THE ALMANAC HOWEVER EVERY YEAR U BRING WORMS IN TO RAISE FOR FISHING AND ADD BACK TO SOIL. WOW WAS SHOCKED WHEN I DID EVERYTHING THE SAME LAST WEEK AND THEY ALL PERISHED IN TWO DAYS! BIRDS FALL FROM SKY, FISH GO BELLY UP IN LAKES,, E-COLI IN OUR LAKES AND ACROSS THE GLOBE NOW WORMS SO HAS THE REST BEEN EXPLAINED?

It's not just worms. It's birds,fish,crabs,octopus,dolphin babies around the world and it started before the radiation leak. I think it's animals that rely on radar or sonar ,there won kinda global positioning that are getting messed up by something distorting their signals. HAARP? Maybe it ties in with why we had to go digital. bad radio signals..Look at youtube. Animals are falling by the thousand or even millions,every where.

So, that's the straightest version of the story I could put together. There are about 200 other comments on the respective FB pages (most of them OMG worms, and some "OMG who cares" ones), these were just the ones that stuck out to me. It isn't often you see the usually quiet and conservative city of Cincinnati go into general conspiracy/critical thinking mode. A lot of those comments were totally surprising to me in that respect, but it is a good thing I think. :)

I do find it interesting that no other local news station covered the story, even after MSNBC picked it up on the national level. There has also been no follow up from the original station that I could find. I did however find a TV news report from Cleveland, about 400+ miles north of Cinci:

_http://www.wkyc.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=192377

They very quickly gloss over and explain that was happened is a very natural process called 'stranding' without mentioning anything about the unusualness of the event.

 

[Al Today]

I sure don't have an answer, but here is my observation. I am in the NW Ohio are, just outside of the worm "corridor". I am not in a "concrete jungle" so if the worms are coming up, that wouldn't be very noticeable in the woods and grass. I do see the birds are eating well nowadays. They're fat and happy.

Just the prior week to this worm "event", from Sunday through Thursday that week the emergency radio here was blasting off continually, so I left it on. Storm news, all day, every day that week. I have mentioned this "weird" weather in some of my postings of late. Not a usual spring time to say the least.

The weather pattern was flowing west to east while the storm fronts (walls) were for the most part blasting through the whole state. North to South, from west to east, that week. Storm, after storm, after storm kept a rolling by. Tornado watches were continuous & Tornado touchdowns were almost everyday. Rain, storms, wind, lightening, thunder every day. One day we had 4 inches of rain. The pond I have in t he back yard overflowed and that would have taken at least 8-10 inches of rain to do that. Flood warnings were daily and continued for day afterwards. Matter of fact as of today, the ground is still so saturated that a good 1/2 inch or so of rain will now start a flash flooding, again...

I would guess the worms gotta come up for air?

fwiw