YORO, Honduras — Things don’t come easy in La Unión, a small community on the periphery of Yoro, a farming town in north-central Honduras.

Poverty is universal, jobs are scarce, large families are crammed into mud-brick homes and meals often are constituted of little more than the subsistence crops residents grow — mainly corn and beans.

But every once in a while an amazing thing happens, something that makes the residents of La Unión feel pretty special.

The skies, they say, rain fish.

It happens every year — at least once and often more, residents say — during the late spring and early summer. And only under specific conditions: a torrential downpour, thunder and lightning, conditions so intense that nobody dares to go outside.