Nearly 32 years ago, a mysterious gelatinous substance was observed after an early-morning rain storm in and around the Oakville community.
The weird, clear gelatin baffled locals, who found it on their car windshields and hanging from tree branches. Animals reportedly died after consuming it, and residents also got sick from what eventually became known colloquially as the Oakville blobs.
According to Beverly Roberts, an Oakville resident who recounted her experience with the blobs to The Chronicle in 2014, 12 of her friend’s animals died from exposure, and she herself spent a week in the hospital after handling the blobs. Even handling the blobs with rubber gloves, she ended up getting vertigo to the point where she could no longer stand.
Local doctors in the area reported a spike in patients coming in with inner-ear problems and respiratory issues. Following the initial appearance of the Oakville blobs on Aug. 7, 1994, Roberts said the blobs fell six more times that month.
While multiple possible theories for the blobs’ origins have been posed over the years as samples have been analyzed before, no conclusive answer has been reached.
I first moved up here in 2022 from Arizona, and knew virtually nothing about the Oakville blobs until last year, when Rochester resident Alli McCrite contacted The Chronicle to report once again observing the blobs in the community after a rain storm. While McCrite did collect more samples to analyze, she said they melted at room temperature.
Given Rochester and Oakville’s proximity to each other, I felt if I ever was going to observe the blobs myself, I’d have to be in that area.
That’s why I was quite surprised last week on Wednesday, April 15, to suddenly find a mysterious gelatinous substance after a rain storm outside of the Mossyrock Community Center, some 40 miles southeast of Oakville as the crow flies.
I was there for the monthly Mossyrock City Council meeting, and during the meeting, for about five minutes or so, heavy rain fell. I didn’t think anything of it, as rain is a part of everyday life here, depending on the season.
That is, until I got out into the parking lot, and noticed that some of the water on the ground wasn’t exactly flat.
While there wasn’t an abundance of blobs as originally observed, to the point where they were covering windshields, there was a small cluster of the blobs on a section of pavement roughly one-square-foot in size.
They ranged from the largest at about the size of a quarter in diameter to small chunks barely half the size of a dime. I didn’t have any gloves or anything besides a plastic sandwich bag in my car to collect samples, but given I’m 35 and Roberts was much older when she was exposed to whatever caused her illness, I went ahead and took a risk.
Flipping the bag inside-out, I used it as both a glove and a container for the samples. Though the mysterious substance is gelatinous, it was much more delicate than I expected, and every blob I picked up instantly fell apart into smaller chunks, making it difficult to collect.
With samples gathered, I rushed to my home. Knowing the samples McCrite collected melted at room temperature, I wanted to put mine on ice in the freezer to hopefully preserve them.
Thankfully, five days after handling the blobs, I can report I have had no symptoms of vertigo or respiratory issues. The blobs didn’t melt by the time I got them to the freezer, and are now frozen solid.
While previous samples were sent to both the Washington state Department of Ecology and Department of Health (DOH) for analysis, the agencies drew different conclusions. Ecology staff stated the blobs were inorganic, while DOH believed they were organic.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Tom Paulson, who broke the initial Oakville blob story in 1994, also sent a sample to a private lab for testing. Their conclusion? The blobs were composed of a chemical called polyacrylamide — a chemical used in multiple industries including a water treatment flocculant and a soil conditioner in agriculture.
Some thought the blobs were residue left over from an experiment conducted by U.S. military personnel out of the nearby Joint Base Lewis McChord, while others theorized a violent storm at sea sucking jellyfish out of the water and depositing their remains on the mainland.
However, none of these theories explained the animal deaths or symptoms doctors reported, and to this day, no conclusive explanation has been presented for any of the blobs seen in Oakville or Rochester.
As for my own samples from Mossyrock, they remain on ice, and after collecting them I contacted various chemistry and biology professors at Centralia College (CC) to see if they would be interested in analyzing them.
Currently, CC assistant chemistry professor Angela Peck has offered to take a look, and I am coordinating with her to deliver the samples this week.
Though she recommended contacting the chemistry department, CC associate professor of biology and nutrition Kelsea Jewell did propose another possible explanation, a chemical called sodium polyacrylate.
This chemical is a water-absorbent material capable of soaking up to 1,000 times its mass in water.
“Instead of falling from the sky, it is possible that the material was spilled and not noticed until a rainy day. This would happen if it was sodium polyacrylate, which is a common potting soil amendment (and is in diapers) as it swells dramatically to create a water-retaining, clear gel … In that situation the gel doesn't melt, but it does dry out and the pieces of polyacrylate become so small that they are easily not seen against soil,” Jewell said in an email.
Jewell also recommended taking a sample out to see if after it melts, or if instead the water evaporates and it transitions to a “tiny, white crystalline lump,” which could be an indicator that it’s sodium polyacrylate or a similar substance. That’s a test I’ll let Peck handle though, as she’ll have the equipment and facilities to safely analyze the blobs.
I could see Jewell’s theory as being plausible, as there’s a nearby Ace Hardware in Mossyrock just down the street from the community center. Someone could have easily purchased a bag of potting soil which may have had a small hole in it and leaked as they walked to their car in the parking lot.
Perhaps a farmer had some sodium polyacrylate sprayed onto their fields, and some dirt containing the chemical stuck to their boot and fell off in the parking lot when they stepped out of their car.
This could explain why I only found the blobs in one small section of the Mossyrock Community Center parking lot.
Whatever these blobs are, hopefully Peck’s analysis will shed a bit more light onto the mystery. Either way, even if you aren’t near Oakville or Rochester, keep an eye on the ground after the next rain storm, because you might just find more blobs and be able to collect more samples — and perhaps this strange mystery can finally be solved.
