The Oakville Blobs: Mysterious Gel Creates A Panic

In August 1994, a normal day took a turn into mystery when rice-sized blobs fell on the town like rain drops. They jiggled. They wiggled. They smeared everything in a slippery goo. And the mystery has never been solved. Get the gooey scoop after the jump.

CASE FILE 01: The Oakville Blobs

Location: Oakville, Grays Harbor County, Washington
Classification: Biological anomaly (unconfirmed)
Evidence quality: Weird and very thin (and the samples are gone)

The Mysterious Blob Event

In August 1994, it was a typical day … until it wasn’t. A normal rain started. Then people walked outside and noticed something was … off. Tiny clear blobs dotted the ground. Like little bits of gelatin. Not puddles. Not hail. Just weird, jiggly specks on cars, lawns, and porches.

One officer said the rain was so heavy he had to pull over. Later, folks described the blobs as about the size of rice. Some said they smeared on windshields. Others said they scooped them up. And then the town started swapping the same question over and over: What the heck is this stuff?

Officials and researchers began collecting samples. Early answers only deepened the mystery. A hospital technician may have found what looked like human white blood cells in the substance. Washington state labs found different bacteria (including Pseudomonas fluorescens and Enterobacter cloacae). That raised questions about what the material actually was and where it came from. With no clear source identified, Oakville’s “blobs” settled into that familiar PNW category: a strange event with just enough documentation to keep the mystery alive.

Why It’s Memorable

Because it hits three weirdness points:

• Weather doing something it should not do
• A possible health link (reported illness and animal deaths, depending on the retelling)
• A vanishing evidence trail, which is gasoline for folklore AND nightmares

And in April 2025, KUOW (a local NPR channel) reported fresh “goo rain” in Rochester, which pours fresh nightmare fuel on a 1990s mystery.

Monster Description

I’m not sure this qualifies as a monster or cryptid encounter, but … Witness accounts generally describe:

• Clear to milky gel, sometimes “rice-sized” bits
• Falling with rain, collecting on cars, lawns, pavement
• Hard to identify … creates a panic

Rational Explanations

Three possible buckets include:

1. Natural biological material: jelly fungi fragments, algal/microbial mats, amphibian egg mass bits, or biofilm blown/washed around. But … that doesn’t explain how it got into a storm.
2. Industrial polymer: a gel-like polyacrylamide (PAM) type substance has been floated in reporting as a possible match, though the story is messy and not cleanly documented end-to-end. It still doesn’t answer how it got into the air to mix with rain.
3. Multiple events, one legend: unrelated goo sightings stitched into one monster narrative over time. Except this really happened in 1994: There’s no hoax with this.

How To Investigate The Oakville Blobs

• Build a chain of custody plan first. If it happens again, you want sterile collection cups, labeling, cold storage, and an agreed lab handoff before the first blob hits the deck.
• Collect controls: rainwater sample, surface swab from a clean container, nearby puddle water.
• Request testing with clear asks: microscopy, FTIR (polymer fingerprint), bacterial culture screen, and basic chemistry (pH, conductivity).
• Track meteorology: wind direction, storm path, nearby industrial activity, coastal upwelling events.

Recommended Blob Collection Kit

• Nitrile gloves
  Keeps your skin oils, lotion, dirt, and bacteria off the sample (and keeps mystery goo off you). Helps reduce contamination.
• Sterile specimen cups (or sterile sample jars)
  Clean containers with tight lids so you can collect blobs without introducing junk from a random jar. Also prevents leaks.
• Zip-top bags
  Secondary containment. If a cup leaks, the bag saves your car and preserves labels. Also lets you double-bag samples.
• Sharpie (permanent marker)
  Label everything immediately: date/time, exact location, collector name, “sample A/B,” and what surface it came from. If it’s not labeled, it’s basically useless.
• Cooler + ice packs
  Slows biological breakdown and bacterial overgrowth. Keeps the sample closer to “what it was when it fell,” not “what it became in a warm trunk.”
• Disposable pipettes / droppers
  Lets you transfer liquid or small gel bits without scooping with dirty tools. Good for grabbing tiny fragments and for making multiple aliquots.
• pH strips
  Fast, cheap clue: is the material acidic, neutral, or basic? It won’t identify it, but it can help rule things in/out and guide lab testing.
• Simple notebook log (or printed chain-of-custody sheet)
  This is your evidence backbone. Record this info: weather, where it landed, what it looked/smelled like, photos taken, who handled it, and where it went next. Makes your story defensible.
• Small ruler / scale card for photos
  So your pictures prove size and shape instead of “it was kinda like rice.”
• Alcohol wipes (to clean tools/surfaces)
  Prevents you from cross-contaminating sample A with sample B.

Closing Thoughts

To be honest, I’m not really sure what kind of investigation you could do here. It’s not like the weather forecast will have mysterious blobs in the atmosphere as a weather warning.

If it happens again, it may be so isolated you won’t make it to the location in time. If you have to depend of local authorities to get samples, how would you even test it? This type of creature (if you can call it that) requires intensive lab work.

And that’s not something a lot of us amateur cryptozoologists have access to.

Bibliography

1. Denkmann, Libby. “Return of the blobs: SW Washington revisited by decades-old gooey mystery.” KUOW, May 8, 2025. (KUOW)
2. Denkmann, Libby, and Shane Mehling. “Can you solve the mystery of the Oakville blobs?” KUOW (Soundside), May 7, 2025. (KUOW)
3. “Can you solve the mystery of the Oakville blobs?” Soundside (episode page / audio listing), May 7, 2025. (Omny Studio)
4. “Oakville blobs return? Resident says she and neighbors saw mysterious blobs falling from the sky once again last week.” The Chronicle (Centralia), Apr. 16, 2025. (Site blocks some automated access; open in a normal browser.) (Chronicle News)
5. “The Day Blobs Rained Down on Oakville.” The Chronicle (Centralia), Aug. 9, 2014. (Site blocks some automated access; open in a normal browser.) (Chronicle News)
6. “‘Oakville blob’ phenomena featured on Netflix show of the unexplained.” The Chronicle (Centralia), Apr. 9, 2024. (Site blocks some automated access; open in a normal browser.) (Chronicle News)
7. “‘Oakville Blob’ a mystery 30 years later.” KING 5, Aug. 7, 2024. (Site blocks some automated access; open in a normal browser.) (KING 5)
8. “The Blob.” Unsolved Mysteries (official site gallery page). (Unsolved Mysteries)
9. “Weird Weather: The Mystery of the ‘Oakville Blobs’.” Mental Floss, Oct. 3, 2022. (Mental Floss)
10. Spanner, Holly. “What were the ‘Oakville blobs’?” BBC Science Focus, (Q&A page; date not shown in the excerpt), accessed Jan. 10, 2026. (Science Focus)
11. “30 Years Later: The Oakville Blob.” KXRO News Radio, Jan. 7, 2024. (KXRO News Radio)
12. Dunning, Brian. “Star Jelly.” Skeptoid (background context on gelatinous ‘falls’ / similar phenomena), Feb. 28, 2012. (Site blocks some automated access; open in a normal browser.) (Skeptoid)

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Have you ever encountered a blob? If so, let me know about it in the comments below.

Thanks for reading about the Oakville Blobs. Much appreciated and take care!