Spider apocalypse: Spooky spider webs blanket Australian town after floods, pics surface

Thousands of spiders and their webs have blanketed bushland in Australia's state of Victoria, after it was hit by heavy rains and flooding, with some calling the phenomenon a "spider apocalypse". The spooky images were first shared to Reddit but have since gone viral across the internet.

Thick blankets of spider webs have been pictured stretched across the Gippsland region amid heavy rain and subsequent flooding in Victoria.

Victoria was hit by heavy rains and high winds last week, forcing thousands of people to evacuate. There are still many who remain without power in the state as authorities repair transformers and clear roads.

As per a report by The Age, millions of spiders evacuated their waterlogged nests to take refuge in trees and plants, blanketing the small Gippsland town of Longford in a dense veil of silken webbing after the flooding. The East Gippsland town was one of the hardest-hit areas. 

Professor Dieter Hochuli of the University of Sydney said that the cobwebs are a natural phenomenon and not an apocalypse.

The spiders moved to higher ground to escape the saturated ground, local media reported, spinning giant cobwebs in order to shelter themselves from the damp.

The professor told 7NEWS that what's been seen in Victoria is a group of spiders called sheet web spiders who mostly stay on the ground layer, but start moving during heavy rains and flooding.

"They move to a higher ground (and build a new house there)," he was quoted as saying by 7NEWS.

Local reports suggest the phenomenon is known as ballooning, where cooler weather conditions have prompted spiders to cover stretches of land in cloudlike cobwebs to try and shelter themselves from wet conditions.

East Gippsland is also experiencing a degree of mouse plague activity, which for a number of months has devastated regional New South Wales and has now crept across the southern border.

The rodents have eaten through electrical wires which sparked a house fire in Narrabri, New South Wales, while cars have been damaged.