Spiders fall from the sky in Australia

It is raining spiders in Australia - yes, really.

Scientists have confirmed that the eight-legged creatures fell from the sky in the Southern Tablelands, with locals reporting that their homes were covered in spiders.

Resident Ian Watson told the Sydney Morning Herald: "The whole place was covered in these little black spiderlings and when I looked up at the sun it was like this tunnel of webs going up for a couple of hundred metres into the sky."

Experts say the strange phenomenon is not as unusual as we think.

It is called spider rain, or angel hair, because of the silky, hair-like thread the spiders leave behind.

Rick Vetter, a retired arachnologist at the University of California, Riverside, told Live Science that what Watson saw was likely to be ballooning.

"Ballooning is a not-uncommon behaviour of many spiders. They climb some high area and stick their butts up in the air and release silk. Then they just take off," Vetter said.

In 2012, severe flooding in the town of Wagga Wagga in New South Wales caused thousands of spiders to move to higher ground and left the area appearing as though it had been covered by a thick white blanket.