'Ballooning' spiders rain down on Australian town

An Australian town has been blanketed in webs after millions of baby spiders fell from the sky in a form of migration known as "ballooning".

Residents of Goulburn, New South Wales, tweeted that the town appeared to have been covered by a flurry of snow.

Houses, gardens and fields around the town were soon crawling with tiny spiders. "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," Ian Watson told the Sydney Morning Herald. "You couldn't go out without getting spider webs on you… they kept getting in my beard."

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Scientists said that the phenomenon is an ingenious migration technique. After hatching, baby spiders climb to a high spot, often into treetops, and use their silk to form a parachute or 'balloon'. When the wind dislodges them, they are carried on the breeze to a new location.

Ballooning, also called 'kiting', allows some spiders to reach as far as the Antarctic. It is believed that it is this ability to travel through the air for up to 25 days without food that has enabled spiders to populate every region on earth.

Naturalist Martyn Robinson explains that ballooning spiderlings can fly as high as three kilometres above the ground, which can give the impression that the spiders are raining from the skies.

Spiders escaping waterlogged ground by using their webs to haul themselves to safety can also contribute to the 'angel hair' effect, which can look liked a dusting of snow.

Robinson assured residents that the spiders were harmless and would quickly disperse.