It once rained golf balls in Florida.
According to the Visit Florida website, the city of Punta Gorda “is a family-friendly getaway offering saltwater and freshwater adventures, waterfront shopping, award-winning cuisine, family-friendly attractions, and plenty of old-Florida charm.” Left unsaid is the possibility that visitors may find themselves running for cover amid a golf ball-infused rainstorm.
That apparently was the situation that unfurled in the area in the late hours of Labor Day in 1969. It had indeed rained that night, according to a local newspaper report, but instead of simply finding the usual poststorm moisture on lawns and trees, residents encountered “dozens and dozens” of golf balls “in the gutters, on the street, along the sidewalks, and at Punta Gorda Isles.” Local police did their civic duty of cleaning up the clutter, to the point where one even expressed exhaustion over the effort. Sadly, authorities failed in the ultimate task of determining just what caused this unusual accumulation of pockmarked white spheres.
Popular Mechanics offered one plausible explanation: The city regularly experiences waterspouts (essentially tornadoes over water), which could have sucked up a torrent of balls from a pond at a local golf course, before unloading them back to Earth in a rainstorm. It certainly makes sense from a scientific standpoint and provides another perspective to the “freshwater adventures” promised to tourists in this Gulf Coast locale.
